Re^3: Why are 5.10's named captures read only?

[JavaFan]

There are a gazillion variables "free" to choice from, unless you insist on one-character punctuation variables. Frankly, I don't think you need a one-character punctuation variable for this, and

   %{^MATCH_OFFSETS}

will do fine. Personally, I'd like the values being arrays of arrays, the inner arrays 2 elements, the index of the start of the match, and the index just after the end of the match. (that is, similar to @- and @+). The outer array will hold as many captures with that name there are, so if you have:

    "abc" =~ /(?<l>[a-z])(?<l>[a-z])(?<l>[a-z])/

the result is:

    %{^MATCH_OFFSETS} = ('l'  =>  [[0, 1], [1, 2], [2. 3]]);

I'm also pretty sure that if someone write a patch, it will be added to Perl.

[blazar]

I personally believe it's clear enough that I don't insist but would certainly like... one-character punctuation variables which are nice, too! ;) I fully second the rest of your suggestion, BTW.

If %- were not taken, I would have expected it to hold that kind of info. Methods would be the best thing though... I'm playing more and more with autobox but I know it doesn't fit too well in Perl 5's like typical mindset. (Apart the fact that its very docs warn about it not being real autoboxing!) And I don't know how would it square playing with such special variables as the ones we're discussing here...