This is skipping lines which only have a new line char at the start. m/^\s*$/ is a better way of saying a line with only white space characters because it allows any number of non-printing whitespace characters on the line. Whitespace is \n\f\s\f\r Update: oof..goof should be \n\f\s\t\r order doesn't matter, but there are 5 of these white space critters and I goofed! Ooops!

m/^\n/ and next; ... }
This is sort of a "cheater" way to execute the "next" if the match is true. Sometimes this is a good idea, sometimes not. I would probably code it like this:

next if m/^\s*$/;     #skip/re-prompt for blank lines
#or
if (m/^\s*$/)  #very unlikely that I would write this
{              #but, it means the same as above
   next;
}
I would not write the below. This is obfuscated bad code.
Because it obscures the "if" nature of the statement.
m/^\s*$/ and next;

[download]

In reply to Re^2: About a piece of code by Marshall
in thread About a piece of code by trewq

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.