in reply to Extracting text from a line

my ($uid) = $string =~ /^UID: (\w+)/;
print $fh $uid if $uid;

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(where $fh is a file handle opened for writing to the other file)

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Re^2: Extracting text from a line
by targetsmart (Curate) on Jul 12, 2010 at 05:47 UTC
    print $fh $uid if $uid;

    you meant to say
    print $fh $1 if $uid;
    I guess.

    update almut was right
    I thought it was scalar context, missed to notice that "(" ")" => "list context" ,my mistake :-).
    Thanks to almut and pemungkah


    Vivek
    -- 'I' am not the body, 'I' am the 'soul/consciousness', which has no beginning or no end, no attachment or no aversion, nothing to attain or lose.
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      What's the difference, semantically?

      Note that in list context (my ($uid) = ...), the match operation returns the captures, so $uid holds the same value as $1.  If there is no match, both values are undef.

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        Vivek, I strongly disagree with you here because of the fact that the number variables are very fragile: they are global to every pattern match.

        If someone else comes along and adds (for instance) a"harmless" subroutine call that sometimes does a pattern match of its own between the match and the usage of $1, then the results are unpredictable because the intervening match has reused the global variables.

        If you always capture the value in a separate variable immediately, you're safe from this potential bug.

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