Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!mcnc!uvaarpa!mmdf
From: worley@compass.com (Dale Worley)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: Changing the first character of a string.
Message-ID: <1990Jul3.144552.5407@uvaarpa.Virginia.EDU>
Date: 3 Jul 90 14:45:52 GMT
Sender: mmdf@uvaarpa.Virginia.EDU (Uvaarpa Mail System)
Reply-To: worley@compass.com
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 21


   From: lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall)

	   $flags =~ s/^[^\0]?/U/;

Hmmm...  Why is NUL treated specially?

Also, this illustrates one thing I don't like about regexps -- people
write code which depends on the order in which the alternatives are
matched.  For instance, in the regexp above, the case where [^\0]?
matches the null string can always match, so it implicitly depends on
the fact that the non-null match is tried first.  On the other hand,
it's hard (impossible?) to write a regexp which matches in only the
right way without some way to specify context for the match (shades of
\: and \;!!!).

Dale Worley		Compass, Inc.			worley@compass.com
--
They are actually planning to produce object oriented COBOL.
If it comes out, it will undoubtedly be called "ADD 1 TO COBOL".
	-- Cay Horstmann