just slap in this extra line:

open(FH, "$datfile") || die "Can't open $datfile!";

binmode FH; # <----- this one

while(my $line=<FH>)
{
    chomp($line);
    push(@list, $line);
}
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which will read the file as is and not respond to any special chars. it's particularly useful if you are parsing files from another operating system which may (as in a recent project I did) contain dodgy chars like, and I'll see if I can remember correctly, ctrl-Z in a file which came from a *NIX system but on Win32 it is an EOF char and broke the while (<FH>) { blah; } loop.

larryk