It is like a normal incrementer but it works on string variables, which is the 'magical' part. The variable has to only have been used in string context since it was set and match the pattern:

/^[a-zA-Z]*[0-9]*$/

and not be the null string. It's pretty much designed for cases like this. If you have more than 26 keys, it will go from 'z' to 'aa' and so on. The autodecrement operator (--) ISN'T magical, and I don't think the incrementer works on Unicode, but it's still pretty cool.

In reply to Re^3: Extract a small part of a long sentence using regular expressions by Myrddin Wyllt
in thread Extract a small part of a long sentence using regular expressions by swatzz

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