---
name: unpack
status: documented
runtime: pp
source: src/runtime/pp/strings/pack.rs
---
```{index} single: unpack; Perl built-in (pp runtime)
```

# unpack

## Synopsis

```perl
my @vals = unpack("A10", $data);
my ($long, $short, $str) = unpack("NnA*", $packet);
my @chars = unpack("C*", $bytes);
my @vals = unpack("A5", $_);   # $_ when string omitted
```

## Description

Extracts values from a binary string according to a template.

The inverse of `pack`: takes a TEMPLATE and a binary STRING (or `$_`
if omitted) and returns a list of values extracted according to the
template format characters. The template syntax is the same as for
`pack`, including group syntax `(...)N`, repeat counts, and `*`.

String data is decoded using Latin-1 encoding (each byte maps 1:1 to
a char code point), which correctly round-trips with `pack`'s output.
The `U` format uses character offsets instead of byte offsets.

## See also

pack, vec, ord