\r is LF (\x0A) on the Mac, ...

Huh? Where does this assertion come from, and how exactly would it apply to macosx? Could it be obsolete residue from the bad old os9/mac-perl days? It doesn't seem to hold true on the macosx(10.4.5) that I'm using at the moment:

$ perl -e 'print "\r"' | od -t xC -a
0000000    0d                                                         
+   
          cr
[download]

update: Just to make sure there wasn't some asymmetry:

$ perl -e 'print "\r"' | perl -e '$_=<>; print "got CR\n" if (/\r/)' |
+ od -t xC -a
0000000    67  6f  74  20  43  52  0a                                
           g   o   t  sp   C   R  nl
[download]

(this is perl 5.8.6, btw; presumably, running the latter script on a windows box would yield 8 bytes of output)