Andy Lester wrote:
(2) What does this print (what does adding parens change)?:Adding parens doesn't change anything as far as what matches or doesn't. It only captures the match.
Sure it does, sometimes. Parens allow for multi-character control of the | character while matching. That's why I always use them.
$ cat j.pl
foreach (qw(AAXXBB AAYBB AAXYBB AAYBB AYBB)) {
printf("%-7s", $_);
print (($_ =~ /^AA(XX|Y)BB$/) ? "yes " : "no ");
print (($_ =~ /^AAXX|YBB$/) ? "yes " : "no ");
print "\n";
}
$ perl j.pl
AAXXBB yes yes
AAYBB yes yes
AAXYBB no yes
AAYBB yes yes
AYBB no yes
j