Re: Tutorial suggestion: split and join

[Not_a_Number]

1) This statement:

If you leave off the pattern, split assumes you want to split on /\s+/.

needs considerable qualification. You can't just 'leave off the pattern' except in one particular circumstance. Try this:

my $str = "  foo bar baz  ";
my @spl = split $str;
print "@spl";

It just doesn't work (at least in 5.6.1). You can only leave off the 'pattern' if you also leave off the 'target', ie if you are splitting on an implicit $_, eg:

while ( <DATA> ) {
   split;
   #do something interesting;
}

2) This is plain wrong:

One special case is when you specify the string literal, " " (a quoted space), which does the same thing as specifying no delimiter at all (no argument).

There is nothing special about " " (see gmax's example above). You are confusing it with ' '.

3) One other minor point, I would suggest bringing the paragraph Preserving delimiters up to just below Where do delimiters go?, which IMHO would be a more logical ordering.

hth

dave

Update: See Abigail-II's post below

[Abigail-II]

There is nothing special about " " (see gmax's example above). You are confusing it with ' '.

I don't understand how gmax example shows it. Could you provide us with a single string on which splitting with " " produces a different result than splitting with ' '?

It would be very, very strange if split produces different results, because the difference between " " and ' ' has disappeared long before split is called. After compile time, the difference between " " and ' ' is gone.

Abigail

[Not_a_Number]

Sorry

I always thought that the 'magic' of ' ' was limited to single quotes. And a total misreading of this line:

for ( " ", '\s', '\s+' ) {

in gmax's code seemed to bear out my fallacy.

Remark withdrawn, with apologies.

:( dave