I doubt those nodes you're reading have ever been maintained. Look at the date on them -- Aug 24, 1999 or thereabouts. That's even before the legendary Oct 4, 1999 when the site upgraded to Everything 0.9 (or whatever the gods did that day, see The True Catacombs of Perlmonks for more info). The docs on those nodes are seriously out of date, for example, the copy of perlre you'll find there is 200 lines shorter than this copy, on perldoc.com. If you want to read perlguts, here's a link to an unbroken copy on perldoc.com. HTH.