Blink. Blink. Blink.

What? How can a Perl script be executed without the hash line (#!/usr/bin/perl)? I sorta understand the first bleaching, but how can the script work on subsequent occasions without the hash line?!?

Where to start. Ok, at the Acme::Bleach level, he doesnt care. The file hes produced, only will ever make sense if perl itself reads it and runs it. So the presence or absence of the shebange line is neither here nor there. Its up to the user to make that happen as far as hes concerned. (Although the code is patchable to preserve any existing shebang line, perhaps you should prepare a patch?)

Second, of course its possible for the script to be executed without a shebang line. perl script.pl or perl script.pm works perfectly fine, and on many of the OS's that Perl (and Acme::Bleach) run on shebang lines dont mean anything at all (except that Perl itself pretends like they do). On Win32 for instance file associations are via the registry.

I think he expects the line to be the top one, (I've not read the docs, only the code you posted), and that if you want a shebang line or anything else used first that you'll put it in after the use Acme::Bleach does the encode.

But I dont think you should take the failings of the module too seriously, I dont think he took any of it seriously :-)