(Quiz) To split, or not to split?

You have a string in $_ and you want to get a list of the characters in it. You decide to use @chars = split //, but then your friend (who happens to like regexes a lot) advertises the code @chars = /./gs stating that it works the same way as the other code. You run it on all the possible strings you can come up with, and indeed, it returns the exact same value. But you can't help but thinking it does something different. What is it? Please keep answers encoded, whether it be via ROT-13 or font coloring.

_____________________________________________________
Jeff[japhy]Pinyan: Perl, regex, and perl hacker.
s++=END;++y(;-P)}y js++=;shajsj<++y(p-q)}?print:??;

Comment on (Quiz) To split, or not to split?

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Re: (Quiz) To split, or not to split?
by chipmunk (Parson) on Nov 05, 2001 at 08:12 UTC

@chars = /./gs; grabs characters starting at pos(), and resets pos() afterwards.
For example:
#!perl $_ = "foo"; @chars1 = split //; @chars2 = /./gs; /f/g; @chars3 = /./gs; print "@chars1\n@chars2\n@chars3\n";
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Re: (Quiz) To split, or not to split?
by blakem (Monsignor) on Nov 05, 2001 at 08:18 UTC

Mucking around with pos() beforehand makes them behave differently.

#!/usr/bin/perl -wT
use strict;

$_ = 'abcdefg';
pos($_) = 3;   # <= this modifies the regex but not the split

my @split = split //;
my @regex = /./gs;

print "S:$_\n" for @split;
print "\n";
print "R:$_\n" for @regex;

=OUTPUT
S:a
S:b
S:c
S:d
S:e
S:f
S:g

R:d
R:e
R:f
R:g
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-Blake

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Re: (Quiz) To split, or not to split?
by japhy (Canon) on Nov 05, 2001 at 09:06 UTC

pos()

split()

$DIGIT

_____________________________________________________
Jeff[japhy]Pinyan: Perl, regex, and perl hacker.
s++=END;++y(;-P)}y js++=;shajsj<++y(p-q)}?print:??;