newline character handling

It is all postgresql all day, today :-)
sorry if this should have gone to the novice forum.

As I tried, using COPY, to import a few flat files created under Windows
into postgresql running on a Linux machine, I discovered that:
* If the last field in your record is a string, postgresql imports it, but
keeps the ^M as part of the text string.
* If the last field is numeric, postgresql refuses to import that line
(because of the ^M, the field is not recognized as a number)

Once I stripped the ^M, the data bulkloaded without a problem. Perhaps COPY
should be smarter and recognize the DOS-style line endings?

Curiously,
krishna