$_=""; if (samanda) {print "eek"} then $_="m"; if (samanda) {print "eek"} the first one tests true, but the second doesn't. Why? samanda? Where is samanda defined? ah ah Whhat it's not defined at all. I though it would be interpreted as : $_="m"; if (s amanda) {print "eek $_"} (to be a little clearer) deparse it #### samanda seems to be an unquoted string, and therefore always true aah which will get optimized away so there's no if(){} at all in the deparsed result work like you want for me, with the space affter s with the space after it, it'll be interpreted as s/m/nd/ space is only optional for a non-whitespace non-alphanumeric character I thought the separator/ delimiter rules of s/// would take precidence, but I guess that was stupid :-) (afaik, you can't use whitespace as a delimiter in current versions anymore) booradley: if the space were optional, it'd be a regex, but the space can only be left out for non-alphanumeric characters #### *booradley tries using a unicode character for a delimiter. hmmm keen unicode will usher in a new world of obfu :-) it works? yep omg sámándá HOO HOO HA HA HA omfg pheer is that unicode? looks like a normal chr(255) hmmm 225 #### $_="I am you"; print if (sámándá);