It actually makes sense a lot of the time

Do you have any examples? I can't think of anything realistic.

• When dealing with line data, I'd be in a while (<FILE>) { chomp; ... } loops, so my data would never have any \n in it.

• When dealing with data where \n is considered whitespace, it's no more special than a space, so I'd use the s modifier.

• When dealing with multiline records, I tend to treat the data as line data — especially if I can use the flip-flop (..) operator — so my data would never have any \n in it. This is probably where I'd be least likely to use the s modifier.

• When dealing with binary data, \n is not special, so I'd use the s modifier.

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