All the DProf tests now fail on VMS as of [EMAIL PROTECTED], though 
they don't do so with complete consistency.  When they do fail, it 
happens when attempting to print the Perl executable.  The simplified 
reproducer is the warning emitted by the following one-liner:

$ perl -p perl_root:[000000]perl.exe
Unrecognized character \x03 at perl_root:[000000]perl.exe line 1.

A couple of questions.

Why does ext/Devel/DProf/t/DProf.t:verify attempt to print an 
executable file with -p?  That makes no sense to me since an 
executable image is not printable by any definition I've ever come 
across.  It does look like DProf.t has been doing this for some time, 
though.

Does C<perl -p> have a new-found ability to call the character 
encoding police when it sees a character it doesn't recognize?  That 
does make sense to me, but also makes me more skeptical about whether 
the contents of an executable should be sent through -p.  The bytes 
that comprise an executable file are not characters, so they can't be 
expected to conform to character encoding rules.

My guess as to why the tests don't always fail is that it's entirely 
possible to have an executable that is free of unrecognized 
characters, but the linker is under no obligation to guess what Perl 
will recognize since its target audience is the image loader.
-- 
________________________________________
Craig A. Berry
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]

"... getting out of a sonnet is much more
 difficult than getting in."
                 Brad Leithauser

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