CPAN oddities ... wrong charset?

[Andrew Lee]

Hello,

When trying to install Gisle Aas's remarkably useful Digest::MD5 module I got an
error :

Makefile:85: *** missing separator. Stop.

Indeed, Makefile is hosed ... e.g. :

76 installvendorlib='/usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.8.
77 INSTALLVENDORLIB = ib/perl5'
78 installusrbinperl='def
79 INSTALLARCHLIB = /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.0/i386-linux-thread-multi
80 INSTALLSITEARCH =
81 INSTALLVENDORARCH = /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.8
82 INSTALLBIN = /usr/bin'
83 installhtml1dir=''
84 installhtml3dir=''
85 installman1
86 INSTALLSITEBIN = /usr

?!!?!!!!???

I was succesful in installing other packages -- but I have received this error
(or one like it) on some other packages.

I wonder if my terminal settings are to blame? Something needs to be changed
with the CPAN configuaration?

Any ideas?

TIA