C<$a>. If C<$b> is negative, then C<$a % $b> is C<$a> minus the
smallest multiple of C<$b> that is not less than C<$a> (i.e. the
result will be less than or equal to zero).
-Note than when C<use integer> is in scope, "%" give you direct access
+Note than when C<use integer> is in scope, "%" gives you direct access
to the modulus operator as implemented by your C compiler. This
operator is not as well defined for negative operands, but it will
execute faster.
Binary "<=>" returns -1, 0, or 1 depending on whether the left
argument is numerically less than, equal to, or greater than the right
-argument.
+argument. If your platform supports NaNs (not-a-numbers) as numeric
+values, using them with "<=>" (or any other numeric comparison)
+returns undef.
Binary "eq" returns true if the left argument is stringwise equal to
the right argument.
Binary "ne" returns true if the left argument is stringwise not equal
to the right argument.
-Binary "cmp" returns -1, 0, or 1 depending on whether the left argument is stringwise
-less than, equal to, or greater than the right argument.
+Binary "cmp" returns -1, 0, or 1 depending on whether the left
+argument is stringwise less than, equal to, or greater than the right
+argument.
"lt", "le", "ge", "gt" and "cmp" use the collation (sort) order specified
by the current locale if C<use locale> is in effect. See L<perllocale>.
PATTERN may contain variables, which will be interpolated (and the
pattern recompiled) every time the pattern search is evaluated, except
-for when the delimiter is a single quote. (Note that C<$)> and C<$|>
-might not be interpolated because they look like end-of-string tests.)
+for when the delimiter is a single quote. (Note that C<$(>, C<$)>, and
+C<$|> are not interpolated because they look like end-of-string tests.)
If you want such a pattern to be compiled only once, add a C</o> after
the trailing delimiter. This avoids expensive run-time recompilations,
and is useful when the value you are interpolating won't change over
You can intermix C<m//g> matches with C<m/\G.../g>, where C<\G> is a
zero-width assertion that matches the exact position where the previous
-C<m//g>, if any, left off. The C<\G> assertion is not supported without
-the C</g> modifier. (Currently, without C</g>, C<\G> behaves just like
-C<\A>, but that's accidental and may change in the future.)
+C<m//g>, if any, left off. Without the C</g> modifier, the C<\G> assertion
+still anchors at pos(), but the match is of course only attempted once.
+Using C<\G> without C</g> on a target string that has not previously had a
+C</g> match applied to it is the same as using the C<\A> assertion to match
+the beginning of the string.
Examples:
($one,$five,$fifteen) = (`uptime` =~ /(\d+\.\d+)/g);
# scalar context
- $/ = ""; $* = 1; # $* deprecated in modern perls
+ $/ = "";
while (defined($paragraph = <>)) {
while ($paragraph =~ /[a-z]['")]*[.!?]+['")]*\s/g) {
$sentences++;
print "3: '";
print $1 while /(p)/gc; print "', pos=", pos, "\n";
}
+ print "Final: '$1', pos=",pos,"\n" if /\G(.)/;
The last example should print:
1: '', pos=7
2: 'q', pos=8
3: '', pos=8
+ Final: 'q', pos=8
+
+Notice that the final match matched C<q> instead of C<p>, which a match
+without the C<\G> anchor would have done. Also note that the final match
+did not update C<pos> -- C<pos> is only updated on a C</g> match. If the
+final match did indeed match C<p>, it's a good bet that you're running an
+older (pre-5.6.0) Perl.
A useful idiom for C<lex>-like scanners is C</\G.../gc>. You can
combine several regexps like this to process a string part-by-part,
=item `STRING`
-A string which is (possibly) interpolated and then executed as a system
-command with C</bin/sh> or its equivalent. Shell wildcards, pipes,
-and redirections will be honored. The collected standard output of the
-command is returned; standard error is unaffected. In scalar context,
-it comes back as a single (potentially multi-line) string. In list
-context, returns a list of lines (however you've defined lines with $/
-or $INPUT_RECORD_SEPARATOR).
+A string which is (possibly) interpolated and then executed as a
+system command with C</bin/sh> or its equivalent. Shell wildcards,
+pipes, and redirections will be honored. The collected standard
+output of the command is returned; standard error is unaffected. In
+scalar context, it comes back as a single (potentially multi-line)
+string, or undef if the command failed. In list context, returns a
+list of lines (however you've defined lines with $/ or
+$INPUT_RECORD_SEPARATOR), or an empty list if the command failed.
Because backticks do not affect standard error, use shell file descriptor
syntax (assuming the shell supports this) if you care to address this.
separator character, if your shell supports that (e.g. C<;> on many Unix
shells; C<&> on the Windows NT C<cmd> shell).
+Beginning with v5.6.0, Perl will attempt to flush all files opened for
+output before starting the child process, but this may not be supported
+on some platforms (see L<perlport>). To be safe, you may need to set
+C<$|> ($AUTOFLUSH in English) or call the C<autoflush()> method of
+C<IO::Handle> on any open handles.
+
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
A common mistake is to try to separate the words with comma or to
put comments into a multi-line C<qw>-string. For this reason, the
-B<-w> switch (that is, the C<$^W> variable) produces warnings if
-the STRING contains the "," or the "#" character.
+C<use warnings> pragma and the B<-w> switch (that is, the C<$^W> variable)
+produces warnings if the STRING contains the "," or the "#" character.
=item s/PATTERN/REPLACEMENT/egimosx
PATTERN is delimited by bracketing quotes, the REPLACEMENT has its own
pair of quotes, which may or may not be bracketing quotes, e.g.,
C<s(foo)(bar)> or C<< s<foo>/bar/ >>. A C</e> will cause the
-replacement portion to be interpreted as a full-fledged Perl expression
-and eval()ed right then and there. It is, however, syntax checked at
-compile-time.
+replacement portion to be treated as a full-fledged Perl expression
+and evaluated right then and there. It is, however, syntax checked at
+compile-time. A second C<e> modifier will cause the replacement portion
+to be C<eval>ed before being run as a Perl expression.
Examples:
# symbolic dereferencing
s/\$(\w+)/${$1}/g;
- # /e's can even nest; this will expand
- # any embedded scalar variable (including lexicals) in $_
+ # Add one to the value of any numbers in the string
+ s/(\d+)/1 + $1/eg;
+
+ # This will expand any embedded scalar variable
+ # (including lexicals) in $_ : First $1 is interpolated
+ # to the variable name, and then evaluated
s/(\$\w+)/$1/eeg;
# Delete (most) C comments.
# expand tabs to 8-column spacing
1 while s/\t+/' ' x (length($&)*8 - length($`)%8)/e;
-=item tr/SEARCHLIST/REPLACEMENTLIST/cdsUC
+=item tr/SEARCHLIST/REPLACEMENTLIST/cds
-=item y/SEARCHLIST/REPLACEMENTLIST/cdsUC
+=item y/SEARCHLIST/REPLACEMENTLIST/cds
Transliterates all occurrences of the characters found in the search list
with the corresponding character in the replacement list. It returns
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/>.
+Note that C<tr> does B<not> do regular expression character classes
+such as C<\d> or C<[:lower:]>. The <tr> operator is not equivalent to
+the tr(1) utility. If you want to map strings between lower/upper
+cases, see L<perlfunc/lc> and L<perlfunc/uc>, and in general consider
+using the C<s> operator if you need regular expressions.
+
Note also that the whole range idea is rather unportable between
character sets--and even within character sets they may cause results
you probably didn't expect. A sound principle is to use only ranges
c Complement the SEARCHLIST.
d Delete found but unreplaced characters.
s Squash duplicate replaced characters.
- U Translate to/from UTF-8.
- C Translate to/from 8-bit char (octet).
If the C</c> modifier is specified, the SEARCHLIST character set
is complemented. If the C</d> modifier is specified, any characters
This latter is useful for counting characters in a class or for
squashing character sequences in a class.
-The first C</U> or C</C> modifier applies to the left side of the translation.
-The second one applies to the right side. If present, these modifiers override
-the current utf8 state.
-
Examples:
$ARGV[1] =~ tr/A-Z/a-z/; # canonicalize to lower case
tr [\200-\377]
[\000-\177]; # delete 8th bit
- tr/\0-\xFF//CU; # change Latin-1 to Unicode
- tr/\0-\x{FF}//UC; # change Unicode to Latin-1
-
If multiple transliterations are given for a character, only the
first one is used:
may be closer to the conjectural I<intention> of the writer of C<"\Q\t\E">.
Interpolated scalars and arrays are converted internally to the C<join> and
-C<.> catentation operations. Thus, C<"$foo XXX '@arr'"> becomes:
+C<.> catenation operations. Thus, C<"$foo XXX '@arr'"> becomes:
$foo . " XXX '" . (join $", @arr) . "'";
It is at this step that C<\1> is begrudgingly converted to C<$1> in
the replacement text of C<s///> to correct the incorrigible
I<sed> hackers who haven't picked up the saner idiom yet. A warning
-is emitted if the B<-w> command-line flag (that is, the C<$^W> variable)
-was set.
+is emitted if the C<use warnings> pragma or the B<-w> command-line flag
+(that is, the C<$^W> variable) was set.
The lack of processing of C<\\> creates specific restrictions on
the post-processed text. If the delimiter is C</>, one cannot get
It is possible to inspect both the string given to RE engine and the
resulting finite automaton. See the arguments C<debug>/C<debugcolor>
in the C<use L<re>> pragma, as well as Perl's B<-Dr> command-line
-switch documented in L<perlrun/Switches>.
+switch documented in L<perlrun/"Command Switches">.
=item Optimization of regular expressions
while (<STDIN>) { last unless $_; ... }
In other boolean contexts, C<< <I<filehandle>> >> without an
-explicit C<defined> test or comparison elicit a warning if the B<-w>
+explicit C<defined> test or comparison elicit a warning if the
+C<use warnings> pragma or the B<-w>
command-line switch (the C<$^W> variable) is in effect.
The filehandles STDIN, STDOUT, and STDERR are predefined. (The
starting a new list. All values must be read before it will start
over. In list context, this isn't important because you automatically
get them all anyway. However, in scalar context the operator returns
-the next value each time it's called, or C
+the next value each time it's called, or C<undef> when the list has
run out. As with filehandle reads, an automatic C<defined> is
generated when the glob occurs in the test part of a C<while>,
because legal glob returns (e.g. a file called F<0>) would otherwise