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in reply to Polish Prefix Calculator

What does "++", instead of "+", do in regex parts in the matching portion without /e?

If you are going to use smartmatch, then should mention the minimum perl version for default use. It was not available as any other operator, say "~", without use v5.10.1; in perl 5.10.

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Re^2: Polish Prefix Calculator
by protist (Monk) on Oct 05, 2012 at 05:31 UTC

    ++ matches possessively. This means that it will hold on to what it finds and not backtrack if the match fails with the current amount of matching handled by ++.

    Contrast this with A+, where it will attempt a match of a maximum amount of As, then if the match fails, an A will be "given up" by A+, and a match will be attempted again with one less A. In the case of a failing match, if ++ will suit your needs, ++ is often many times more efficient (faster at failing when it does fail to match).

    In some cases, the difference between + and ++ is trivial. In other cases they are not logically equivalent. Such as in:

    /A++A/ and /A+A/ # /A++A/ should never find a match, as A++ prevents A from being match +ed after it.

    As a matter of good practice and efficiency, I use ++ wherever possible. I do the same with *+

      Thanks for the explanation. (Note to self: possessive quantifiers were introduced in perl 5.9.5.)