Because of the first, the whole structure is kind of odd anyway, since with Mac line endings, you'd slurp the whole file to find out that you have those line endings.
Actually, if you set $/ = "\n" (which is the default), you only have a problem if you read files created by another OS. "\n" isn't a fixed byte - it's the appropriate bytesequence for the OS.

That's why print "$line\n" is the portable way of printing lines to (text)files, but the unportable way of writing to sockets that a protocol that uses CR/LF as its line terminator - as many popular protocols do. And printing "$line\r\n" is unportable as well - use print "$line\x0A\x0D".

In reply to Re^2: alter $/ - but why? by Anonymous Monk
in thread alter $/ - but why? by rvosa

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