Re: Re-use of a global match

[balaji_red83]

It is better not to use /g modifier while performing match operation.

[mr_mischief]

That statement needs to be qualified. It is far from always true. The /g modifier is part of Perl for a reason and there are many things one can do with it that are much more difficult without it.

$foo = (join ', ', 'abacadaeafagahaiaj' =~ m/a/g );
print $foo . "\n";

[mrpeabody]

/g can be useful. But if you just want to know if something matches (which for me is most of the time), you don't need it.

The cases where m///g is useful are where:

• you need to save the position of the last match, or
• you're counting or saving the matches for later use (assigning the result of m/// to a variable)

In practice, I find myself using /g only in substitutions.