You had me for a second. I even went back and checked perlre to see how on earth the /x modifier would eliminate the fact that my RE will load $1 under one alternation option, and $2 under the other alternation option. Of course there's nothing there other than what I expected to find: that the /x modifier allows for whitespace and comments within regexes.

Are you suggesting that with /x it is somehow easier to determine which set of capturing parens loaded up the $1 and $2 special variables? Regular expression readability notwithstanding, I'm missing the point I guess.

The easiest solution I see to the counting problem is just to wrap the entire expression in an outter set of parens so that $1 captures both the right or the left side of the alternation.

But the point is moot I guess, since sauoq's answer seems to have solved the OP's problem in a more graceful way anyway.


Dave

In reply to Re: Re: Re: Re: Capturing everything after an optional character in a regex? by davido
in thread Capturing everything after an optional character in a regex? by Anonymous Monk

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