-0[octal/hexadecimal] specifies the input record separator ($/) as an octal or hexadeci- mal number. If there are no digits, the null character is the separator. Other switches may precede or follow the digits. For example, if you have a version of find which can print filenames terminated by the null character, you can say this: find . -name '*.orig' -print0 | perl -n0e unlink The special value 00 will cause Perl to slurp files in paragraph mode. The value 0777 will cause Perl to slurp files whole because there is no legal byte with that value. If you want to specify any Unicode character, use the hexadecimal format: "-0xHHH...", where the "H" are valid hexadecimal digits. (This means that you cannot use the "-x" with a directory name that consists of hexadecimal digits.)