How do I retrieve the position of the first occurrence of a match?

[lima1]

I need the position of a regular expression match. For example:

$a = "foo 123 bar"; 
if ($a =~ m{\d+}xms) {
    # code that returns 4, the position of 123
}

Originally posted as a Categorized Question.

[lima1]

$line =~ m{(\d+)}g;
my $pos = pos($line) - length $1;

When using the g modifier, pos($line) returns the offset where the last m{}g search left off for $line. In other words it points to the position AFTER the last match. So to get the position of the match, one has to substract the length of the match.

Another possibility is using the match variable $` ($PREMATCH).

$line =~ m{\d+};
my $pos = length $`;

This solution can be slightly faster, but match variables slow all other regular expressions without capturing parentheses in the program down (those with captures have this penalty in either case)! See How do I get what is to the left of my match? and perlre. So use with care!

$line =~ m{\d+}g;
my $pos = pos($line) - length $&;

This third solution can be seen as a compromise between the first two solutions. Using $& will also affect all other regular expressions negativly, but "[...] As of 5.005, $& is not so costly as the other two" (perlre).

Since Perl 5.6.0, there exists a forth way of retrieving the match position:

$line =~ m{\d+};
my $pos = $-[0];

See perlvar @LAST_MATCH_START. This solution does not impose a performance penalty on all regular expression matches and is therefore recommended.