getting hex values of non-ascii strings

Hi,

I need to get the (two-digit, i.e. per-byte) hex values of non-ascii
strings.
I've tried using unpack but it only recognizes us-ascii chars,
outputting the error "Unrecognized character /xA4...", which funnily
enough is the (first) hex value I was after....is there a way to do this
from within a perl script?

thanks,
mags.