Yes, it is more than a little backwards. Binmodeing the $FILE filehandle gives the same results in both cases.

...
binmode $FILE;
...

__END__
Prints:
"Line\r\nLine2\r\nLine3\r\n"
"Line\r\nLine2\r\nLine3\r\n"
Yep.
[download]

In which case you would also have to binmode the output filehandles in order not to add extra carriage returns!!

HOWEVER, it doesn't seem right that the carriage returns are in the File::Slurp data without binmode being set. Is this a function of using sysread?

Can't check at the moment I'll look at it again later.

--
John.