I'm happy to say I just passed the Perl certification on Brainbench and as promised, my employer is raising my salary %15.

There are two questions I was unsure of and I was wondering if someone could explain them to me. I saved the few I was guessing on.

my $data = "Hello World" =~ /(.*) (.*)/; 
print "$data\n";

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This one I got wrong as I expected it to print "Hello World". Instead it prints "1". Can someone explain this phenomonon to me? It's not s///, it's m//, right? So why is $data altered?

When does a BEGIN block execute?

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I said it begins when the script encounters the BEGIN statement. It was either between this one or during compilation. Can anyone help me out with this one?

Thank you for your help.

20040708 Edit by ysth: Add readmore tags to keep spoilers off front-page

In reply to WARNING!! Possible Brainbench spoilers (do NOT read unless you've taken and passed the cert) by Anonymous Monk

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