Very nice. :) You almost got it all. However,

$_= '.' . chr ord
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is not exactly the same thing as

$_= '.'.$_
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Consider this:

${_} = q...q,.,.qq,$=,^q.$..$=;
print ord() . "," foreach(split//);
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and then try to replace like this:

for(;$_?$,:(${_} = q...q,.,.qq,$=,^q.$..$= => $_=q,.,.$_ );) {

It destroys the output (or should, at least). This is because ord returns the value of the first character in the string it is fed. There is a difference. If you replace all the way down to $_="\n" then it works again, of course. :)

For more clarity,

for(s//Just another perl hacker/) {
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is really

foreach(s//Just another perl hacker/) {

- although they are interchangeable syntax-wise in perl.

I don't know if you used it, but sadly deparsing gives a lot away. What I do think is funny is that deparsing translates one for to while, one to foreach and leaves the last as a for:

while ($_ ? $, : ($_ = '.' . "$=" ^ '$' . $=, $_ = '.' . chr(ord $_)))
+ {
    foreach $_ (s// Just another perl hacker/) {
        ();
    }
    for (; s/.//; print $_) {
        ();
    }
}
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Then again, I guess I am easily amused.

I like your initial reminder too - that was exactly what this was "about" - abusing the for construct, which is also a bit special in perl. :)

And oh, there is one more stripping possible to do - to get to approximately where I started (using your example):

$_=".\n";
s//Just another perl hacker/;
while (s/.//) {
  print;
}
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Neither of the for loops has any real reason to be nested into any other - it is really just three separate lines of code.

Thank you for taking the time - it is appreciated. :)

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