Re^4: Regular Expressions

I don't think it's documented. It's just a case of having one place to store a capture and capturing into it multiple times. Each time a capture happens, the old value is overwritten. I wish it were documented, though.

Caution: Contents may have been coded under pressure.

Comment on Re^4: Regular Expressions

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Re^5: Regular Expressions by Anonymous Monk on May 18, 2005 at 06:01 UTC
It is documented. perldoc perlre The numbered match variables ($1, $2, $3, etc.) and the related punctuation set ($+, $&, $`, $', and $^N) are all dynamically scoped until the end of the enclosing block or until the next successful match, whichever comes first. (See "Compound Statements" in perlsyn.)	[reply]
Re^6: Regular Expressions by Roy Johnson (Monsignor) on May 18, 2005 at 11:06 UTC
I read "the next successful match" as a separate Perl operation, not the internal iteration involved in matching (). There is, technically, nothing that dictates the order of internal matching, and if the overall match fails, $1 is not set to the last iteration of () that did match. Caution: Contents may have been coded under pressure.	[reply]