carriage return considered harmful?

[p5pRT]

Migrated from rt.perl.org#954 (status was 'resolved')

Searchable as RT954$

[p5pRT]

From mike@tecc.co.uk

I wrote a perl script using a Windows editor on a filesystem mounted
from a Unix host running samba, then tried to run it on the Unix box,
only to be told​:

  perl ./test.pl
  Illegal character \015 (carriage return) at ./test.pl line 1.
  (Maybe you didn't strip carriage returns after a network transfer?)

I don't wish to appear confrontational, but of what possible use is
this restriction? What does Perl gain by not treating all whitespace
uniformly? Or is this just a case of Perl having to do everything
differently from every other language?

Oh dear, I got all aggressive, didn't it? Sorry.

But really.

  Mike Taylor
  TECC Ltd.
  mike@​tecc.co.uk
  Tel. +44 181 880 4040