It looks like Perl split function treats single quotes literal semantically inconsistently with other constructs

But not always :-). For example

($line)=split(' ',$line,1)
is treated consistently (in AWK way). This is the only way I know to avoid using regex for a very common task of trimming the leading blanks.

In general, split function should behave differently if the first argument is string and not a regex. But right now single quoted literal is treated as regular expression. For example:

$line="head xxx tail";
say split('x+',$line);
will print
head  tail

Am I missing something? BTW this would be similar to Python distinguishing between split and re.split but in a more elegant, Perlish way. And a big help for sysadmins.


In reply to Why split function treats single quotes literals as regex, instead of a special case? by likbez

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