Re: ?: and saving backreferences

[BUU]

I'm rather confused as to what "because the $1 backreference is lost once you exit the scope of the if/else" means to you, to me it sounds like you think $1 is cleared after you exit the scope it was declared in, which is clearly not true.

Am I missinterpreting your statements some how?

Yeah, I was missinterpreting. Consider this retracted.

[ikegami]

Did you run the code the OP posted? Since at least 5.6.1, the $1 set by the regexp inside the if is no longer in scope outside the if. The following illustrates this clearly.

'a' =~ /(.)/;

{
   'b' =~ /(.)/;
   print("$1\n");  # b
}

print("$1\n");     # a

This is documented in perlvar.

[BUU]

You are quite correct and I was missinterpreting his comment. Consider it retracted.