It's not Perl. The input file he used is different than yours, the output file he gave you is not the output he really got, or the script he used is different. The most likely explanation is that somewhere before or after the script was run, the input or output file was converted to UTF-16.

In reply to Re^4: script inserts \x00 bytes on WinXP by ikegami
in thread script inserts \x00 bytes on WinXP by dwhite20899

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