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in reply to How do I assign & substitute in one statement?

From Re: Assign & substitute in one statement? by Zaxo

Just write parens in their precedence-adjusting role:

($dirfilename = $url) =~ s|\Qhttp://foo.bar.com/\E||;

From the Perl Cookbook, recipe 6.1.Copying and Substituting Simultaneously:

You can even use this technique on an entire array:

@bindirs = qw( /usr/bin /bin /usr/local/bin ); for (@libdirs = @bindirs) { s/bin/lib/ } print "@libdirs\n"; __OUTPUT__ /usr/lib /lib /usr/local/lib

The parentheses are required when combining an assignment if you wish to change the result in the leftmost variable. Normally, the result of a substitution is its success: either "" for failure, or the number of times the substitution was done. Contrast this with the preceding examples where the parentheses surround the assignment itself. For example:

($a = $b) =~ s/x/y/g; # copy $b and then change $a $a = ($b =~ s/x/y/g); # change $b, count goes in $a