i --'ed your node. as ruffing stated, the first line is not blank. you might have seen this had you looked closely at my example:

H:\perllib\Tk800.024>perl -e "@dir=`dir`;print \"hello, $dir[0]\""
hello,  Volume in drive H is Disk#1

H:\perllib\Tk800.024>
[download]

~Particle ;Þ