Well, I don't think it's undiplomatic to expect a brand new user to take a couple of minutes to read before posting his question. I would certainly read the last few discussions on any board before I posted (not to mention use the search function). Lamentably, most people who come to forums like this one want to get instant gratification in the form of someone handing them a solution as soon as they ask their question, which is right after they create a user account (or not), which is right after they visit the site for the first time.

It's a courtesy to every such site in the world to search before asking, and there are plenty of notices that this is expected at PerlMonks. Most new users don't do that, and it generally goes unadmonished. But when the answer to the question and plenty of links to documentation are contained in a post that is still on the front page of most views, I think it's fair to point out that fact, and even to the fact that the user could have found it with extremely minimal effort, which I did by adding the words "all of" to my post.

I also linked to the node so he could read the whole discussion, and I edited the subject to reference the use of binmode, which, as you pointed out in that thread, is what he needs. I really think overall that was low on the undiplomacy scale, but then I am not the best judge of that. ++your post because you might be.

The way forward always starts with a minimal test.

In reply to Re^3: Trouble with Chinese characters ( binmode ) by 1nickt
in thread Trouble with Chinese characters by dweston

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.