Re: Why does split on /./ not split the string?

It does. However because the . matches anything, the result may not be what you expect: all the chars are delimiter chars so no fields are found.

DWIM is Perl's answer to Gödel

Comment on Re: Why does split on /./ not split the string?

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Re^2: Why does split on /./ not split the string? by ChemBoy (Priest) on Dec 07, 2005 at 18:55 UTC
Just to expand on this theme a bit, you can get those empty fields returned if you really want them, by passing -1 as the third argument to split: `split /./,'abcde',-1` will dutifully return six empty strings. (Cases with values other than -1 are left as an exercise to the extremely bored.) Of course, there are probably faster ways to count the characters in your string, but that's a side issue. :-) If God had meant us to fly, he would never have given us the railroads. --Michael Flanders	[reply] [d/l]

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Re^2: Why does split on /./ not split the string?
by ChemBoy (Priest) on Dec 07, 2005 at 18:55 UTC

Just to expand on this theme a bit, you can get those empty fields returned if you really want them, by passing -1 as the third argument to split: split /./,'abcde',-1 will dutifully return six empty strings. (Cases with values other than -1 are left as an exercise to the extremely bored.) Of course, there are probably faster ways to count the characters in your string, but that's a side issue. :-)

If God had meant us to fly, he would *never* have given us the railroads.
--Michael Flanders

[reply]
[d/l]