in reply to s!!! vs. s///

In addition to what everyone else has said, I'll note that you can also use an opening bracket, paren or curly, and will get to use the closing ones as might seem expectable: s{(^\d+[.]\s.+)}{<h1>$1</h1>}g; in which case you can also put space between the parts 
s {(^\d+[.]\s.+)}
        {<h1>$1</h1>} g;

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which can be helpful for readability in complex substitutions, and esp a series of them.

Makeshifts last the longest.

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Re: Re: s!!! vs. s///
by bart (Canon) on Nov 11, 2002 at 10:59 UTC
    Not just parens, braces and brackets have this property. "<>" is considered such a pair as well. And there's no need for the second pair to be the same as the first one. These are all equivalent: 
        s/foo/bar/;
    s!foo!bar!;
    s(foo)(bar);
    s{foo}{bar};
    s[foo][bar];
    s<foo><bar>;
    s{foo}[bar];

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    And: the pairs nest poperly. That means that you can use properly nested pairs inside your delimiter pair as well. The same goes for q()/qq(), to which it very similar in rules &mdqh; and that's no coincidence. So even this will work: 
        s[(^\d+[.]\s.+)]<<h1>$1</h1>>g;

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    (provided the original does what you want. ;-)
    For any other, unpaired delimiter inside your string, you'll have to escape it, by prepending it with a backslash.

    For the official docs, see quote and quote-like operators in perlop.

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