in reply to Copying an ascii text file, replicating end of line terminator (windows or unix)

The output record separator may help you do what you want:

$\ = $endofline; print OUTFILE $processed_string; # Appends the wanted end of line corr +ectly
This may be a problem if you are not writing to OUTFILE only while $\ is changed. If you can limit the change to a defined scope (ie: localize) that would probably be better:
{ local $\ = $endofline; my $old_handle = select OUTFILE; # Write to OUTFILE only while (<>) { process($_); print $_; # write to selected handle (OUTFILE) and append $\ } select $old_handle; } # $\ has its old value again