in reply to My obfuscation debute

Well, you need to assume a lot more than that. Remember that everyone's perl is a little different, and "perl -v" does NOT necessarily have "Copyright 1987-1999, Larry Wall" as the third line of the output. Specifically, I tried this on three platforms, and all gave different outputs, until I found one that did output the desired string (yes, I'll reveal it here, as it may not work on many platforms): "Marry had a littl lamb." Don't know if your machine's third line is a little different, and thus the extra 'r' and the missing 'e'.

A Solaris box output this:

Match padrarieeram
which made me wonder what obscure song *that* referred to! :)

Perhaps have a way to search for the correct line? The concept is a good idea...