to C<"-bareword">.
Unary "~" performs bitwise negation, i.e., 1's complement.
-(See also L<Integer Arithmetic>.)
+(See also L<Integer Arithmetic> and L<Bitwise String Operators>.)
Unary "+" has no effect whatsoever, even on strings. It is useful
syntactically for separating a function name from a parenthesized expression
Binary "=~" binds a scalar expression to a pattern match. Certain operations
search or modify the string $_ by default. This operator makes that kind
of operation work on some other string. The right argument is a search
-pattern, substitution, or translation. The left argument is what is
-supposed to be searched, substituted, or translated instead of the default
+pattern, substitution, or transliteration. The left argument is what is
+supposed to be searched, substituted, or transliterated instead of the default
$_. The return value indicates the success of the operation. (If the
right argument is an expression rather than a search pattern,
-substitution, or translation, it is interpreted as a search pattern at run
+substitution, or transliteration, it is interpreted as a search pattern at run
time. This can be is less efficient than an explicit search, because the
pattern must be compiled every time the expression is evaluated.
=head2 Bitwise And
Binary "&" returns its operators ANDed together bit by bit.
-(See also L<Integer Arithmetic>.)
+(See also L<Integer Arithmetic> and L<Bitwise String Operators>.)
=head2 Bitwise Or and Exclusive Or
Binary "|" returns its operators ORed together bit by bit.
-(See also L<Integer Arithmetic>.)
+(See also L<Integer Arithmetic> and L<Bitwise String Operators>.)
Binary "^" returns its operators XORed together bit by bit.
-(See also L<Integer Arithmetic>.)
+(See also L<Integer Arithmetic> and L<Bitwise String Operators>.)
=head2 C-style Logical And
the same character fore and aft, but the 4 sorts of brackets
(round, angle, square, curly) will all nest.
- Customary Generic Meaning Interpolates
- '' q{} Literal no
- "" qq{} Literal yes
- `` qx{} Command yes
- qw{} Word list no
- // m{} Pattern match yes
- s{}{} Substitution yes
- tr{}{} Translation no
+ Customary Generic Meaning Interpolates
+ '' q{} Literal no
+ "" qq{} Literal yes
+ `` qx{} Command yes
+ qw{} Word list no
+ // m{} Pattern match yes
+ s{}{} Substitution yes
+ tr{}{} Transliteration no (but see below)
-For constructs that do interpolation, variables beginning with "C<$>" or "C<@>"
-are interpolated, as are the following sequences:
+Note that there can be whitespace between the operator and the quoting
+characters, except when C<#> is being used as the quoting character.
+C<q#foo#> is parsed as being the string C<foo>, which C<q #foo#> is the
+operator C<q> followed by a comment. Its argument will be taken from the
+next line. This allows you to write:
+
+ s {foo} # Replace foo
+ {bar} # with bar.
+
+For constructs that do interpolation, variables beginning with "C<$>"
+or "C<@>" are interpolated, as are the following sequences. Within
+a transliteration, the first ten of these sequences may be used.
\t tab (HT, TAB)
\n newline (LF, NL)
\033 octal char
\x1b hex char
\c[ control char
+
\l lowercase next char
\u uppercase next char
\L lowercase till \E
This usage is vaguely deprecated, and may be removed in some future
version of Perl.
-=item m/PATTERN/gimosx
+=item m/PATTERN/cgimosx
-=item /PATTERN/gimosx
+=item /PATTERN/cgimosx
Searches a string for a pattern match, and in a scalar context returns
true (1) or false (''). If no string is specified via the C<=~> or
Options are:
+ c Do not reset search position on a failed match when /g is in effect.
g Match globally, i.e., find all occurrences.
i Do case-insensitive pattern matching.
m Treat string as multiple lines.
the search at that point. You can actually find the current match
position of a string or set it using the pos() function; see
L<perlfunc/pos>.) A failed match normally resets the search position to
-the beginning of the string, but you can avoid that by adding the "c"
+the beginning of the string, but you can avoid that by adding the C</c>
modifier (e.g. C<m//gc>). Modifying the target string also resets the
search position.
$today = qx{ date };
+Note that how the string gets evaluated is entirely subject to the
+command interpreter on your system. On most platforms, you will have
+to protect shell metacharacters if you want them treated literally.
+On some platforms (notably DOS-like ones), the shell may not be
+capable of dealing with multiline commands, so putting newlines in
+the string may not get you what you want. You may be able to evaluate
+multiple commands in a single line by separating them with the command
+separator character, if your shell supports that (e.g. C<;> on many Unix
+shells; C<&> on the Windows NT C<cmd> shell).
+
+Beware that some command shells may place restrictions on the length
+of the command line. You must ensure your strings don't exceed this
+limit after any necessary interpolations. See the platform-specific
+release notes for more details about your particular environment.
+
+Also realize that using this operator frequently leads to unportable
+programs.
+
See L<"I/O Operators"> for more discussion.
=item qw/STRING/
=item y/SEARCHLIST/REPLACEMENTLIST/cds
-Translates all occurrences of the characters found in the search list
+Transliterates all occurrences of the characters found in the search list
with the corresponding character in the replacement list. It returns
the number of characters replaced or deleted. If no string is
-specified via the =~ or !~ operator, the $_ string is translated. (The
+specified via the =~ or !~ operator, the $_ string is transliterated. (The
string specified with =~ must be a scalar variable, an array element, a
hash element, or an assignment to one of those, i.e., an lvalue.)
+A character range may be specified with a hyphen, so C<tr/A-J/0-9/>
+does the same replacement as C<tr/ACEGIBDFHJ/0246813579/>.
For B<sed> devotees, C<y> is provided as a synonym for C<tr>. If the
SEARCHLIST is delimited by bracketing quotes, the REPLACEMENTLIST has
its own pair of quotes, which may or may not be bracketing quotes,
-e.g., C<tr[A-Z][a-z]> or C<tr(+-*/)/ABCD/>.
+e.g., C<tr[A-Z][a-z]> or C<tr(+\-*/)/ABCD/>.
Options:
that this is slightly more flexible than the behavior of some B<tr>
programs, which delete anything they find in the SEARCHLIST, period.)
If the C</s> modifier is specified, sequences of characters that were
-translated to the same character are squashed down to a single instance of the
+transliterated to the same character are squashed down to a single instance of the
character.
If the C</d> modifier is used, the REPLACEMENTLIST is always interpreted
tr [\200-\377]
[\000-\177]; # delete 8th bit
-If multiple translations are given for a character, only the first one is used:
+If multiple transliterations are given for a character, only the first one is used:
tr/AAA/XYZ/
-will translate any A to X.
+will transliterate any A to X.
-Note that because the translation table is built at compile time, neither
+Note that because the transliteration table is built at compile time, neither
the SEARCHLIST nor the REPLACEMENTLIST are subjected to double quote
interpolation. That means that if you want to use variables, you must use
an eval():
expression represents so that the interpreter
won't have to.
+=head2 Bitwise String Operators
+
+Bitstrings of any size may be manipulated by the bitwise operators
+(C<~ | & ^>).
+
+If the operands to a binary bitwise op are strings of different sizes,
+B<or> and B<xor> ops will act as if the shorter operand had additional
+zero bits on the right, while the B<and> op will act as if the longer
+operand were truncated to the length of the shorter.
+
+ # ASCII-based examples
+ print "j p \n" ^ " a h"; # prints "JAPH\n"
+ print "JA" | " ph\n"; # prints "japh\n"
+ print "japh\nJunk" & '_____'; # prints "JAPH\n";
+ print 'p N$' ^ " E<H\n"; # prints "Perl\n";
+
+If you are intending to manipulate bitstrings, you should be certain that
+you're supplying bitstrings: If an operand is a number, that will imply
+a B<numeric> bitwise operation. You may explicitly show which type of
+operation you intend by using C<""> or C<0+>, as in the examples below.
+
+ $foo = 150 | 105 ; # yields 255 (0x96 | 0x69 is 0xFF)
+ $foo = '150' | 105 ; # yields 255
+ $foo = 150 | '105'; # yields 255
+ $foo = '150' | '105'; # yields string '155' (under ASCII)
+
+ $baz = 0+$foo & 0+$bar; # both ops explicitly numeric
+ $biz = "$foo" ^ "$bar"; # both ops explicitly stringy
=head2 Integer Arithmetic
which lasts until the end of that BLOCK.
The bitwise operators ("&", "|", "^", "~", "<<", and ">>") always
-produce integral results. However, C<use integer> still has meaning
+produce integral results. (But see also L<Bitwise String Operators>.)
+However, C<use integer> still has meaning
for them. By default, their results are interpreted as unsigned
integers. However, if C<use integer> is in effect, their results are
interpreted as signed integers. For example, C<~0> usually evaluates