</quote>You aren't aware of what the switches on your one-liner are doing for you. See perlrun
The -n is the most important one. It applies a while(<>) { ... } loop around your code.
</quote>

You are correct. I am confused as all get out. I think what is getting me the worst is all the short hand and defaults. For instance, is "<>" short hand for "<STDIN>"?.
What would really help me is if you would rewrite

echo -e "abc\ndef\nghi\n" | perl -wlne '! /def/ and print "$_";'

for me with "-we" in place of "-wple" with all the short hand and defaults removed so I could see exactly what is going on. (You would be my hero as I have asked this elsewhere and have not understood it there either. Mostly very helpful folks show me a better way to write it in a full script. And although greatly appreciated, it does not help me understand exactly what is happening in the "-wple" one liner or how to duplicate it in a full script.)

Many thanks, -T

In reply to Re^4: Regex match on implicit default variable ($_) in a script, not a one liner by Todd Chester
in thread Regex match on implicit default variable ($_) in a script, not a one liner by Todd Chester

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