Re^2: Counting the number of items returned by split without using a named array

[Anonymous Monk]

a) You're right, I didnt want to know that

b) hm, I just wanted to catch spaces and tabs and thought \s+ most appropriate.

Never seen =()= in the perldoc before :-/
I.

[blazar]

Because it's not an operator of itself. It's an assignment to a list further piped into another assignment. It's just a means to create a list context. Others may find a better wording to describe it: possibly mine is not as technically accurate as it could be. Unfortunately as others already explained, it's not reliable to use it with split.