The ^A
character you mention is the "start of heading" character. You can set the special Perl variable $/
to this character. Although, if you want your code to be readable and editable by the guy who comes after you (and uses another editor), I would do something like this:
use English;
local $INPUT_RECORD_SEPARATOR = "\cA" # 'start of heading' character
while (<>)
{
chomp; # remove the unwanted 'start of heading' character
print $_ . "\n";
}
From Perldoc:
$INPUT_RECORD_SEPARATOR
$/The input record separator, newline by default. This influences Perl's idea of what a "line" is.
More on special character escaping on PerlMonks.
Oh and if you want, you can enter the "start of heading" character in VI, in insert mode, by pressing CTRL+V, then CTRL+A.
edit: added local
per Drt's suggestion