I'm writing a function that expects either a 4 digit number or a 4digit number followed by an underscore and 3 more digits. (ie: 9999 or 9999_002) If the value only contains 4 digits I want to append "_001" to the end. I could have sworn that all I needed to do was: (pseudo code follows)

my ($new_retid) = $retid =~ /_\d{3}$/ || "${retid}_001";

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This of course does not work. $new_retid is always a 1.
It always bugs me that I can't remeber stuff like this. And trying to find answers like this quickly is a challenge(but I do try).
As always,

Thank you!

In reply to Variable assignment confusion by sweetblood

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