I came across what, according to my reading of the docs, is an anomoly in the way substr works.

Is this a bug in substr, or my reading of the docs? 

 0.02 0.02 >$,='|'

|0.02|0.02|>$s = qq(the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog)

# Used this way, the return is the 4 bytes replaced.
|0.02|0.02|>print substr($s,0,4,''),$s
the |quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog

|0.02|0.02|>print $s
quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog

# But used this way, it is the first 4 bytes *after* the replacement o
+ccurs?
|0.02|0.02|>print substr($s,0,4)='',$s
k br|k brown fox jumps over the lazy dog

|0.02|0.02|>print $s
k brown fox jumps over the lazy dog

[download]
What's this about a "crooked mitre"? I'm good at woodwork!

In reply to [substr] anomaly or mine? by BrowserUk

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.