Re^2: substitute leading whitespace

ikegami, maybe I'm misunderstanding your second reason, but I don't think it is correct, because it implies that, under the /g modifier, prior substitutions affect subsequent matches, but consider the following variant of the original example:

my $s = '   this is a  string';
( my $t = $s ) =~ s/(?<!\w)\s/X/g;
print $t, $/;
__END__
XXXthis is a Xstring
[download]

If I understood your second reason correctly, according to it the printout would have been:

X Xthis is a Xstring
[download]

because after the first substitution the second space no longer matches the first part of the s///.

the lowliest monk

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Re^3: substitute leading whitespace by ikegami (Patriarch) on Jun 10, 2005 at 14:59 UTC
You've just demonstrated my first point. My second point explained why the regexp wouldn't work even in the absense of the behaviour. Less abstractly, I was tring to explain that matching the beginning of the string (`^` when not under `/m`) is useless under </code>/g</code>. It's the same as if `/g` wasn't there. I rephrased my post to this effect.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^4: substitute leading whitespace by tlm (Prior) on Jun 11, 2005 at 18:55 UTC
You've just demonstrated my first point. My second point explained why the regexp wouldn't work even in the absense of the behaviour. Less abstractly, I was tring to explain that matching the beginning of the string (^ when not under /m) is useless under </code>/g</code>. Heh, that's a neat trick! First, delete the text a post refers to, and then offer an (unfalsifiable) interpretation of what that post is saying. Cool! the lowliest monk	[reply]