The second example you showed ... 

sub get_captures {
    my ($pattern, $line) = @_;
    my @captures = $line =~ m/($pattern)/;
    shift(@captures);
    return @captures;
}

[download]

... won't work in the production code of which my code presented here is a sample. That's because it would impose upon my users an unnecessary and likely-to-be-forgotten requirement: that they enclose the regex in parentheses so as to guarantee that at least one substring is captured.

More interesting is this approach, which you tucked away: 

sub get_captures {
    my ($pattern, $line) = @_;
    my @captures = $line =~ m/$pattern/;
    return @captures[0 .. $#+ - 1];
}

[download]

Once I understand @+ and @- better, I'll see whether I like this better than Grandfather's suggestion.

Thank you very much.

Jim Keenan

In reply to Re^6: regex question - dynamically address captures by jkeenan1
in thread regex question - dynamically address captures by nmerriweather

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