On 5/3/05, Nicholas Clark <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Is this behaviour documented anywhere?
>
> perl -le '@c = " one two three" =~ /(?: (\S+))+/; print foreach @c'
> three
>
> Specifically that captures inside groupings that repeat capture the last
> string.
>
> I can't find it in perlre*.pod
No. Me either, nor could I actually find any proper documentation for
the (pattern) which actually surprised me. However I do believe its
implicit if you realize that ( is just (for some definition of 'just')
a zero width pattern which always matches and sets the start position
of its respective buffer, likewise ) when accompanied by a balanced
'(' is just a zero-width pattern which always matches and sets the end
position of its respective buffer. So the pattern says
Repeat zero or more times:
mark start of buffer, match \S 1 or more times, mark end of buffer
Also for the record ive seen a fair number of posts on Perlmonks that
explain or exploit this property.
Cheers,
Yves
--
perl -Mre=debug -e "/just|another|perl|hacker/"
