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From: lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: Substitution shortcut?
Message-ID: <9423@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
Date: 7 Sep 90 00:53:42 GMT
References: <MIKE.MCMANUS.90Sep6133949@mustang.FtCollins.NCR.com>
Reply-To: lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall)
Distribution: comp
Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA
Lines: 27

In article <MIKE.MCMANUS.90Sep6133949@mustang.FtCollins.NCR.com> Mike.McManus@FtCollins.NCR.com (Mike McManus) writes:
: 
: If I have something like this:
: 
: $a = "hello";
: $b = $a;
: $b =~ s/ello/i/;
: 
: ...is there a "short" way to write this?  Something like:
: 
: $a = "hello";
: $b = ($a ~ s/ello/i/);
: 
: Seems silly to have to say $b = $a first, but if I gotta, so be it.  Just
: curious if I've been missing something.

Recall that an assignment can be an lvalue.  So the idiom is

	$a = "hello";
	($b = $a) =~ s/ello/i/;

This is also quite useful with chop and tr///:

	chop($HOST = `hostname`);
	($host = $HOST) =~ tr/A-Z/a-z/;

Larry