in reply to Care to explain s/\A\s*//?
in thread Help me write a good reg-exp for this text

$ perldoc perlre

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The \A anchors the search at the beginning of the string. A ^ anchors a search at the beginning of the LINE in a string. Documentation is a wonderful thing.

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Re: Re: Care to explain s/\A\s*//?
by bart (Canon) on Sep 05, 2003 at 17:46 UTC
    I don't understand why you want to act in such an obscure manner, because without the /m modifier, as here, there is no difference between /^\s*/ and /\A\s*/. So you might just as well use the far more familiar form, with the caret.

    The difference between /\Z/, /\z/ and /$/ is far more significant.

    Well, I do agree with you on the RTFM part... it's all in there. Looking there should become a more natural response, than asking here.

    I'd prefer 

      s/^\s+//;

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    anyway, as this wouldn't do an empty substitution if the string doesn't start with whitespace.
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