http://qs1969.pair.com?node_id=60974

mkmcconn has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

The snippet below gives an example of what I would like to do. My questions follow the snippet.

#!/usr/bin/perl -wl use strict; for (<DATA>){ chomp; my ($base, $end) = $_ =~ /(\w+)\.(tif(?:f)?\b)/gi; next if not defined $base; print "$base \t $end"; } __DATA__ list 1.tif convert 3.tif to baloney.pic path is c:\TIFS\009.tif 10.tif how many "11.tifs" are there? 14.TIFF

Until I came across the idea that regular expressions may be used for assignment to multiple variables as above, I might have tried to concoct split expression to handle the job. This is a new idea to me. Are there potential gotchas or performance penalties, attached to using regular expressions for assignment to variables, as above, instead of split?

split asks me to look for an element I want to discard, but my brain wants 'assignment' to be equal to the elements I'm trying to keep. This is what I'd call a "psychological" advantage: using an idiom that more closely expresses what I want to do. Do you agree?
mkmcconn