use the /x modifier on the regex, which lets you throw in whitespace for formatting without screwing up semantics

... with one significant caveat: spaces lose their semantics.

The RE /foo bar/ is not the same as /foo bar/x. The latter is equivalent to /foobar/. And there is a space in the OP's RE, which will therefore be incorrect if /x is blindly applied.

The choices are either to escape the space with a backslash (which is difficult to read, especially if the backslash-space winds up at the end of a line) or replace it with \s, which is not semantically equivalent (it can match tabs or newlines as well). There is always [\ ] but I'm not sure it's a win.

In reply to Re:x2 This looks like someone sneezed and hit the keyboard (whitespace semantics in /x REs) by grinder
in thread This looks like someone sneezed and hit the keyboard by Anonymous Monk

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.