«

This I understand,
$ perl -le '@a=split//,"abc"; print $#a; print for(@a)'
2
a
b
c

But why this behavior?
$ perl -le '@a=split/(.)/,"abc"; print $#a; print for(@a)'
5

a

b

c

TIA
-James

On 2010-08-25 19:56, James wrote:

> This I understand,
> $ perl -le '@a = split //, "abc"; print $#a; print for @a'
> 2 [...]
>
> But why this behavior?
> $ perl -le '@a = split /(.)/, "abc"; print $#a; print for @a'
> 5 [...]

See perldoc -f split, look for 'parentheses'.

--
Ruud

On 25 août, 19:56, James <hslee...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> But why this behavior?
> $ perl -le '@a=split/(.)/,"abc"; print $#a; print for(@a)'
> 5
>
> a
>
> b
>
> c

Looks normal to me: you split with any character as separator, so you
get:

- an empty string before the separator 'a'
- then, because you have put brackets into the regex, the separator
('a' in this case) is added
- then another empty string between the two separators 'a' and 'b'
- then, again, you have put brackets into the regex, so you get the
second separator ('b' in this case)
- then yet another empty string between the two separators 'b' and 'c'
- finally you get the last separator 'c'

Klaus wrote:
> On 25 août, 19:56, James<hslee...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> But why this behavior?
>> $ perl -le '@a=split/(.)/,"abc"; print $#a; print for(@a)'
>> 5
>>
>> a
>>
>> b
>>
>> c
>
> Looks normal to me: you split with any character as separator, so you
> get:
>
> - an empty string before the separator 'a'
> - then, because you have put brackets into the regex, the separator
> ('a' in this case) is added
> - then another empty string between the two separators 'a' and 'b'
> - then, again, you have put brackets into the regex, so you get the
> second separator ('b' in this case)
> - then yet another empty string between the two separators 'b' and 'c'
> - finally you get the last separator 'c'

And finally you get the last empty string between 'c' and the
end-of-string, which is discarded because it is a trailing empty string.
If you want to see it use a negative number as the third argument to
split:

$ perl -le '@a=split/(.)/,"abc",-1; print $#a; print for(@a)'
6

a

b

c




John
--
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and
more complex... It takes a touch of genius -
and a lot of courage to move in the opposite
direction. -- Albert Einstein