$/ = \1;
while (<STDIN>) {
    print "The one byte that I just got is $_\n";
}
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I looked but I can't find the doc to back it up but it works - you just make the line terminator a reference to a number (whatever that's called - please enlighten me) and <FH> reads that many bytes from FH at a time. I think it's a bit quicker than getc as well.

larryk

"Argument is futile - you will be ignorralated!"