In general after a successful match (or the match part of a substitution), the regex engine keeps a copy of the original string so that it can dynamically generate values for $1, $2, $&, $` etc on demand. This string needs to be kept for at least as long as the surrounding scope - i.e. the scope of $1 etc. The details are far more complex, but internally perl's Copy-on-Write mechanism often (but not always) avoids having to do a real copy. But it doesn't always work out for the most efficient use of memory.

Dave.

In reply to Re: Substitution with regex and memory consumption by dave_the_m
in thread Substitution with regex and memory consumption by k-mx

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