Definitions for "Binary mode"
Keywords:  perl, multimedia, newline, mode, ftp
Data transfer scheme in which no special character processing is performed. All characters are considered to be data and are passed through with no control actions being taken.
FTP client mode used to transfer binary files (multimedia files, executables and other data files). Not suitable for transferring normal text files.
When using files, you can use either binary mode or text mode. Binary mode means that Perl will not change your input or output in any way. By the way, this is my preferred mode of operation. Text mode-only available on some operating systems like Windows 95 and Windows NT-will convert newline/carriage return character pairs into a single newline. It will also interpret any byte that has a value of 26 as the end-of-file marker.