in reply to Why do I need a space here?

Sorry, but I can not reproduce your problem:
octo@leeloo:~ $ perl -we '$i="\< HTML\>\n"; print STDOUT $i;'
< HTML>
octo@leeloo:~ $ perl -we '$i="\<HTML\>\n"; print STDOUT $i;'
<HTML>

-octo-

Update: Forgot the "not".. Sorry..

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