Hi, Everyone!

In my, "I don't want to be a newbie anymore!" quest I've been going through the Llama book. It's taught me a lot! I understand what /^\\[d-m_](\w)*\s/i means now. That's a big change. I also understand that I'd probably never need *that* search....

Wasted time aside, there were a few things I ran into that don't do what I thought they should do. Can someone tell me why?

This first question has to do with code trying to write (1..9).0 seven times in a row; making a column heading, so to speak. This first bit doesn't work:
my @step=(1..9);
push (@step, 0);
my $step;
foreach (@step) {
  $step . $_;
}
print ($step x 7);

[download]
but this does:
my @step=(1..9);
push (@step, 0);
my @stepCount=(1..7);
foreach (@stepCount) {
  print @step;
}

[download]
yet they look like they should do the same thing. Why don't they?

The next bit of Why_Doesn't_it_do_It code is supposed to check for one of two strings, and make sure that it prints three times. Merlyn will probably recognize some of the arguments:
my $what = "fred|barney";

while (<>) {
  chomp;
  if ($_ =~ ($what){3}) {
    print "It's in there.\n";
  }
  else {
    print "Not there.\n";
  }
}

[download]
doesn't do what this does:
my $what = "(fred|barney){3}";

while (<>) {
  chomp;
  if ($_ =~ $what) {
    print "It's in there.\n";
  }
  else {
    print "Not there.\n";
  }
}

[download]

Yet to my don'tBeANewbieAnymore eyes it looks like the first code is basically the same as the second, if = means "=". Can someone tell me what's the real difference between the two bits of code?

Thanks. Cheers!
-p
Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats.

-Howard Aiken

In reply to I'm reading a book! It's given me more questons! by Petras

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