Depending on platform, the \n sequence is converted by perl to:

Unix: octal \012       hex 0xA      dec 10      LF      may be \n
Dos:  octal \015\012   hex 0xD0xA   dec 13 10   CRLF    may be \r\n
Max:  octal \015       hex 0xD      dec 13      CR      may be \r
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Although perl works for you trying to allow you to just use \n as your newline delimiter and let it sort the platform dependent details, many common *internet protocols* specify the \015\012 sequence and unfortunately the values of Perl's \n and \r are not reliable since they can and do vary across platforms.

I suspect that $textfield is named from its HTML source so you will probably want to use a truly portable solution like this:

  $textfield =~ s/\015\012|\015|\012//g;

  If you prefer hex to octal :-)

  $textfield =~ s/\xD\xA|\xD|\xA//g;
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If you are confused by the \012 or \xA notation all this is saying to perl is what I want you to match is the ASCII char decimal 10 == octal 12 == hex A == binary 1010

  In expanded commented /x form:

  $textfield =~ s/         # substitute
                \015\012   # a CRLF sequence (DOS, MIME...)
                |          # or
                \015       # a lone LF (mac)
                |          # or   
                \012       # a lone LF (unix)
                /          # with literal ''
                /xg;       # /x allow comments, /g do globally
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No, in DOS, "\n" is "\012". It only becomes "\015\012" when written to a file (and then only if that file handle is not in binmode -- and this is done by the C RTL, not by Perl). Even under Unix, "\n" is turned into "\015\012" when written to many devices (just not when written to files).

        - tye (but my friends call me "Tye")

See perlfunc:s.

I suspect that you want the Regular Expression Substitution command:

$foo =~ s/\n/ /g;
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This will go through the whole of the string in $foo and globally ('cos of the trailing 'g') replace every \n with a space.

If your files are coming from a mac or a PC, you will need to change the pattern to match on

-- Ian Stuart
A man depriving some poor village, somewhere, of a first-class idiot.