At this point, I need to get a Unix account and run some tests and compare Windows vs Unix. This will take some weeks.

I did look at Re^7: How do I display only matches and I am perplexed.

Somehow, print $sock "foo\n\0\0"; produces 66:6f:6f:0a:00:00. On both Windows and Unix? That does indeed surprise me! But, if true, that does indeed indicate that on Windows, printing to a socket is different than printing to a file.

let's stop this subthread. I will investigate further.