Corion goes into detail about the rest of this, but as far as the $Buffer variable goes, no. Using the NULL character is C-style thinking. In Perl, if you want something to be NULL, don't put anything there. :-) E.g.:

$Buffer = '';
@Buffer = ();
%Buffer = ();
[download]

NOTE: A variable that has a NULL value is slightly different from an undefined value:

my $notdef;
my $defnull;  # like the pun?
$defull = '';

if ( defined $notdef ) {
  # This will never happen.
}

if ( defined $defnull ) {
  print "DEFNULL is $defnull.\n";
}
[download]

This is why it's often wise to declare and initialize your variables at the same time. You can use a variable with a NULL value - as a hash key, for example - but not an undefined one.

--J