Greedy Pattern Matching.
The . matches anything (and more importantly - everything.) {Except \n}

UPDATE: It has been pointed out to me that I am only partly correct. The dot does in fact match anything {Except \n} but it does not behave in a greedy manner. Rather, Perl is saying that the substring ($key2) is found in the other string ($key)... which is ok. I apologize if I confused anyone.

In reply to RE: pattern matching: why does the following code evaluate true? (and how do i fix it?) by Adam
in thread pattern matching: why does the following code evaluate true? (and how do i fix it?) by Buckaroo Buddha

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