c:\@Work\Perl\monks\Marshall>perl -wMstrict -e "use autodie; ;; use Data::Dump qw(dd); ;; my $s = qq{first\nsecond\n}; dd 's:', $s; print 'length: ', length $s, qq{\n}; ;; { open my $fh, '>', 'junque'; print $fh $s; close $fh; } ;; { open my $fh, '<', 'junque'; binmode $fh; my $t = do { local $/; <$fh>; }; dd 't:', $t; print 'length: ', length $t, qq{\n}; close $fh; } " ("s:", "first\nsecond\n") length: 13 ("t:", "first\r\nsecond\r\n") length: 15