in reply to Re^4: regex search for words with one digit
in thread regex search for words with one digit
Very instructive! I hadn't looked closely at your code, embarrassingly, and this actually happens to be the first example I can remember where a \b is actually required. And I really can't think up an alternative without it. (It's not that I somehow don't like it, just that I've never had to use it.)
On reflection, I would perhaps have used split and then something with grep {/^...$/} -- much clumsier and also amounting to the same thing in disguise, namely string anchors. I never realised that \b are a kind of ^ and $, but within the text.
(The point I was trying to make -- only half convincingly -- was that I think it's a good habit not to throw in things "for good measure" and move on as soon as it works, because that approach doesn't teach you a lot, and you sometimes walk away with a wrong or (worse!) fuzzy impression of what actually did the trick. Or both. I have experienced this a thousand times.)