<booradley> $_="";
<booradley> if (samanda) {print "eek"}
<booradley> then 
<booradley> $_="m";
<booradley> if (samanda) {print "eek"}
<booradley> the first one tests true, but the
            second doesn't. Why?
<ar0n> samanda?
<ar0n> Where is samanda defined?
<booradley> ah ah
<ar0n> Whhat
<booradley> it's not defined at all.
<booradley> I though it would be interpreted as :
<booradley> $_="m";
<booradley> if (s amanda) {print "eek $_"}
<booradley> (to be a little clearer)
<Juerdje> deparse it
[download]

TIME PASSES AND THE CODE IS DEPARSED

<Juerdje> samanda seems to be an unquoted string, and therefore 
          always true
<booradley> aah
<Juerdje> which will get optimized away
<Juerdje> so there's no if(){} at all in the deparsed result
<Zaxo> work like you want for me, with the space affter s
<Juerdje> with the space after it, it'll be interpreted as s/m/nd/
<Juerdje> space is only optional for a non-whitespace 
          non-alphanumeric character
<booradley> I thought the separator/ delimiter rules of s/// would tak
+e precidence, but I 
            guess that was stupid :-)
<Juerdje> (afaik, you can't use whitespace as a delimiter
          in current versions anymore)
<Juerdje> booradley: if the space were optional, it'd be 
          a regex, but the space can only be 
          left out for non-alphanumeric characters
[download]

CHAPTER 3 : Too Tricky For His Own Good!

*booradley tries using a unicode character for a delimiter.
<Juerdje> hmmm
<booradley> keen
<booradley> unicode will usher in a new world of obfu :-)
<Juerdje> it works?
<booradley> yep
<Juerdje> omg
<booradley> sámándá
<booradley> HOO HOO HA HA HA
<Juerdje> omfg
<booradley> pheer
<Juerdje> is that unicode?
<Juerdje> looks like a normal chr(255)
<Juerdje> hmmm
<Juerdje> 225
[download]

The character I used was (A + COMBINING GRAVE ACCENT), but I wonder if this was a result of my editor, or one of our IRC clients translating the character into something else? Here's a small example which works appropriately (or my estimation of appropriately)

$_="I am you";
print if (sámándá);
[download]

does this work because my locale has no (A + COMBINING GRAVE ACCENT) defined, and treats it as a non alpha numeric? or are unicode characters outside the realm of alphanumeric characters as perl currently knows them?

I'm curious to hear your comments or opinions.