I'm ready to run screaming towards the hills

I'm attempting to debug the shopping cart from hell [1]. I finally got rid of the warnings, and the script is generating the following:

**Set-Cookie:** shopper_id=91548; path=/;…> **Content-type:** text/html…>
<HTML> …

But Apache [2] still doesnt' like it. I poke around and fine a test.pl script:

>
```
#!/usr/bin/perl
print "Hello world\n";
```

Okay. I can build on this, adding stuff to see what Apache might be complaing about. I run this script from the command line and get “: bad interpreter: No such file or directory”.

Excuse me?

>
```
# which perl
/usr/bin/perl
# more test.pl
#!/usr/bin/perl
print "Hello world\n";
```

Huh?

I write my own version of this:

>
```
#!/usr/bin/perl
print "Hello world\n";
```

And it worked.

Me: 0. Desk 2: [3]

Okay, probably some invisible character in test.pl that's giving the perl interpreter fits. Delete #!/usr/bin/perl and retype it.

>
```
: bad interpreter: No such file or directory
```

Me: 0. Desk 3: [4]

Much mucking around later (and remember, this is a side trek from what I'm supposed to be doing—debugging some comercial perl script) I find out that not only is test.pl in the Microsoft text format, but that the version of vi (vi!) I'm using is “smart” enough to deal with the Microsoft text format and keep the file in that format!

Me: 0. Desk 4: [5]

XXXX this, I'm going home.

[1] /boston/2005/01/14.1

[2] http://httpd.apache.org/

[3] /boston/2005/01/12.1

[4] /boston/2005/01/12.1

[5] /boston/2005/01/12.1

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