thanks for the link to the thread. I have tried to read the file with the two ways shown in the code below. Neither correctly identifies the end of line (cr/lf). The thread explained the layers, but something must be still wrong. I got a suggestion to use file::BOM, but it is not on the shared server I am using and the IT guy does not want to install it. Would that be a forward step on this problem?

#       open (FH_SEGMENT_FILE, '<:crlf:encoding(UTF-16LE):raw', $file_
+segment_name ); 
        open (FH_SEGMENT_FILE, '<:raw:encoding(UTF-16LE):crlf ', $file
+_segment_name );
        @segment_array=<FH_SEGMENT_FILE>;
        close(FH_SEGMENT_FILE);
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