Re^3: I need a "non-trivial" bug for my script!

[Lawliet]

Hah, I hated that one! Out of curiosity, what is the best method of fixing it? Undefining $1 before the regex (not sure if that is possible), testing to see if the regex is successful, or something else?

[f00li5h]

Do the match in list context, and don't use $\d+ at all

if (@kitties = $string =~ /pattern (with) captures/) {
  paw_at @kitties;
}

Obviously you can use my($cats, $kittens) in place of @kitties there.

The other option is check that the match succeeded first

if ($string =~ /pattern (with) captures/) {
  paw_at $1;
}

but $1 is ugly... unpacking into either an array or bundle of scalars will get you less maintenence-programmer hate.