ASCII to binary and vice versa

a2b.pl

#!/usr/bin/env perl

use feature qw'say' ;
use strict ;
use warnings ;
use Data::Translate ;

my $data = new Data::Translate;

# allows a2b.pl foobarblee or echo foobarblee | a2b.pl
my @start ;
if ( scalar @ARGV ) {
    @start = @ARGV ;
    }
else {
    while (<STDIN>) { push @start , $_ }
    }

say join ' ' , 
    map { ( $data->a2b( $_ ) )[ 1 ] }
    split m{} ,
    join ' ' , @start ;

#space between bytes because that's what the Robot did

b2a.pl

#!/usr/bin/env perl

use feature qw'say' ;
use strict ;
use warnings ;
use Data::Translate ;

my $data = new Data::Translate;
my @start ;
if ( scalar @ARGV ) {
    @start = @ARGV ;
    }
else {
    while (<STDIN>) { push @start , $_ }
    }
my $start = join ' ' , @start ; # binary octets separated by space chars
for my $l ( split m{\s+} , $start ) {
    my ( undef , $o ) = $data->b2a( $l ) ;
    # print $o ; # the broken behavior 
    print $o eq '' ? ' ' : $o ; # knows, if you get '' , you want ' '
    }
say '' ;

chunk_of_Translate.pm

# https://metacpan.org/source/DAVIEIRA/Data_Translate-0.3/Translate.pm

sub b2a {
  shift;
  local ($binstr)= @_;
  if ($binstr=~/^[01]+$/) {
      $as=unpack("A*", pack("B*", $binstr));
      return 1,$as;
  } else {
      return -1,0;
  }
}