Occasionally, you can't use just a /g to get all the changes to occur. Here are two common cases:


    # put commas in the right places in an integer
    1 while s/(.*\d)(\d\d\d)/$1,$2/g;      # perl4
    1 while s/(\d)(\d\d\d)(?!\d)/$1,$2/g;  # perl5

    # expand tabs to 8-column spacing
    1 while s/\t+/' ' x (length($&)*8 - length($`)%8)/e;