"^" to match only at the beginning of the string and "$" to match
only at the end (or just before a newline at the end) of the string.
Together, as /ms, they let the "." match any character whatsoever,
-while yet allowing "^" and "$" to match, respectively, just after
+while still allowing "^" and "$" to match, respectively, just after
and just before newlines within the string.
=item x
There is no limit to the number of captured substrings that you may
use. However Perl also uses \10, \11, etc. as aliases for \010,
-\011, etc. (Recall that 0 means octal, so \011 is the 9'th ASCII
-character, a tab.) Perl resolves this ambiguity by interpreting
-\10 as a backreference only if at least 10 left parentheses have
-opened before it. Likewise \11 is a backreference only if at least
-11 left parentheses have opened before it. And so on. \1 through
-\9 are always interpreted as backreferences."
+\011, etc. (Recall that 0 means octal, so \011 is the character at
+number 9 in your coded character set; which would be the 10th character,
+a horizontal tab under ASCII.) Perl resolves this
+ambiguity by interpreting \10 as a backreference only if at least 10
+left parentheses have opened before it. Likewise \11 is a
+backreference only if at least 11 left parentheses have opened
+before it. And so on. \1 through \9 are always interpreted as
+backreferences.
Examples:
got <d is under the >
Here's another example: let's say you'd like to match a number at the end
-of a string, and you also want to keep the preceding part the match.
+of a string, and you also want to keep the preceding of part the match.
So you write this:
$_ = "I have 2 numbers: 53147";
But that isn't going to match; at least, not the way you're hoping. It
claims that there is no 123 in the string. Here's a clearer picture of
-why it that pattern matches, contrary to popular expectations:
+why that pattern matches, contrary to popular expectations:
$x = 'ABC123' ;
$y = 'ABC445' ;
at the end of the list, just before the closing "]". (The
following all specify the same class of three characters: C<[-az]>,
C<[az-]>, and C<[a\-z]>. All are different from C<[a-z]>, which
-specifies a class containing twenty-six characters.)
-Also, if you try to use the character classes C<\w>, C<\W>, C<\s>,
-C<\S>, C<\d>, or C<\D> as endpoints of a range, that's not a range,
-the "-" is understood literally.
+specifies a class containing twenty-six characters, even on EBCDIC
+based coded character sets.) Also, if you try to use the character
+classes C<\w>, C<\W>, C<\s>, C<\S>, C<\d>, or C<\D> as endpoints of
+a range, that's not a range, the "-" is understood literally.
Note also that the whole range idea is rather unportable between
character sets--and even within character sets they may cause results
Characters may be specified using a metacharacter syntax much like that
used in C: "\n" matches a newline, "\t" a tab, "\r" a carriage return,
"\f" a form feed, etc. More generally, \I<nnn>, where I<nnn> is a string
-of octal digits, matches the character whose ASCII value is I<nnn>.
-Similarly, \xI<nn>, where I<nn> are hexadecimal digits, matches the
-character whose ASCII value is I<nn>. The expression \cI<x> matches the
-ASCII character control-I<x>. Finally, the "." metacharacter matches any
-character except "\n" (unless you use C</s>).
+of octal digits, matches the character whose coded character set value
+is I<nnn>. Similarly, \xI<nn>, where I<nn> are hexadecimal digits,
+matches the character whose numeric value is I<nn>. The expression \cI<x>
+matches the character control-I<x>. Finally, the "." metacharacter
+matches any character except "\n" (unless you use C</s>).
You can specify a series of alternatives for a pattern using "|" to
separate them, so that C<fee|fie|foe> will match any of "fee", "fie",
$_ = 'bar';
s/\w??/<$&>/g;
-results in C<"<><b><><a><><r><>">. At each position of the string the best
+results in C<< <><b><><a><><r><> >>. At each position of the string the best
match given by non-greedy C<??> is the zero-length match, and the I<second
best> match is what is matched by C<\w>. Thus zero-length matches
alternate with one-character-long matches.
L<perllocale>.
+L<perlebcdic>.
+
I<Mastering Regular Expressions> by Jeffrey Friedl, published
by O'Reilly and Associates.