Re^11: Understanding a portion of perlretut

Yes, thanks, I’m starting to see some light. :-) But:

In the first case, the engine starts from the left and finds a match, repeating (\w\w\w) 3 times:

Makes sense, but then, if the $1 match effectively ends up as (\w\w\w){3}, shouldn’t $1 contain uvXYZdabc? Or, conversely, if the ? quantifier following the * causes it to find the minimum string in uvXYZdabc matching (\w\w\w)*, shouldn’t that be "", the null string? Why does $1 match abc here?

Athanasius <°(((>< contra mundum Iustus alius egestas vitae, eros Piratica,

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Re^12: Understanding a portion of perlretut by Corion (Patriarch) on Dec 10, 2015 at 13:30 UTC
The repeated capturing overwrites the value in `$1`. If you want the repetition inside of a capture variable, you'll have to use something like `((?:\w\w\w)*?)`.	[reply] [d/l] [select]