in reply to Help me recover my Perl script

"Normal" characters interspersed with "NULL" characters: that looks very much like a file with "wide" (or multi-byte) characters such as Unicode uses.

Did you try opening the file with the (regular) Windows Notepad? Version 5.1 (part of Windows XP) allows you to choose the encoding when opening and saving files.

CountZero

A program should be light and agile, its subroutines connected like a string of pearls. The spirit and intent of the program should be retained throughout. There should be neither too little or too much, neither needless loops nor useless variables, neither lack of structure nor overwhelming rigidity." - The Tao of Programming, 4.1 - Geoffrey James

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom