In general, they do what you want, unless you want consistency.

Well, you can implement a Perl peek() with unpack('P',...). Once you have that, there's only security through obscurity.

The world has become a larger place. The universe has been expanding, and Perl's been expanding along with the universe.

You want it in one line? Does it have to fit in 80 columns?

I think the way IBM has embraced the open source philosophy has been quite astonishing, but gratifying. I hope they'll do very well with it.

A journey of a thousand miles continues with the second step.

I think operating systems work best if they're free and open. Particular applications are more likely to be proprietary.