Hi :-),
this was a pretty cool read! I learned a lot from it. Thanks.

One question though: I don't really get this little piece of code:

$\ = $/; # ORS = IRS = "\n"
$, = ":"; # OFS = ","

while (<PASSWD>) {
  chomp;  # removes $/ from $_
  my @f = split $,;  # splits $_ on occurrences of $,
  # fool around with @f
  print MOD @f;
}
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Why would it put a newline to the end of each line during the print? You say that "$\ goes where you put a \n in your print()" but you're chomp()ing the newlines.

What do I miss here?

Hmm, now looking at it I get even more questionmarks on my forehead:

1. What's the point of assigning a colon to $, when split doesn't use it by default?
2. Why do you have to assign $\ with $/? Aren't they supposed to have the same value anyway?
3. Why don't we have an abbrev like <c> for the code-Tag, since it is really much to type *grin*?

Still, as I said above: good read!

Regards...	Stefan
you begin bashing the string with a +42 regexp of confusion

ps: a typo in your article:

$ARGV this holds the input source currently begin read from
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should probably be "being read from", er?