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in reply to Re: Regexp problem
in thread Regexp problem

As far as I understand the debugger, both expressions are evaluated in list context.

The first expression simply returns 1 for success and I assume 0 an empty list for failure; so it's a single boolean result in list context.

The second expression has capturing parantheses, which (in list context) produces a list of captured results. As your (p)* could not be matched, there is no captured value for (p), so it returns a list with one element: undef.

That's my attempt to explain it. I am sure there are others who can explain it more detailed and accurately and even show some insight into the internals ...

DB<4> x "24-06" =~ /\d+-\d+/ 0 1 DB<5> x "24-06" =~ /\d+-\d+failure/ empty array

edit:

  • fixed assumption upon failed regex match, added code example, some rephrasing