Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!jpl-devvax!lwall
From: lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: Multi-line strings and $*
Message-ID: <10259@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
Date: 6 Nov 90 18:23:43 GMT
References: <1391@tharr.UUCP>
Reply-To: lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall)
Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA
Lines: 25

In article <1391@tharr.UUCP> gustav@tharr.UUCP (Paul Moore) writes:
: I'm having a bit of trouble understanding how to use $* to handle
: multiline strings.
: 
: I have a string, $article, which contains a large number of lines of
: text (OK, so it's a news article...) The article may end with any number
: of blank lines (ie, \n\n\n), which I want to remove.
: 
: My first thought is $article =~ s/\n+$//, with $* = 0. But the manual says
: "Pattern matches on strings containing multiple newlines can produce
: confusing results when $* is 0". Um.
: 
: However, if $* = 1, there seems to be no way of anchoring a pattern to
: the end (or the beginning) of a string.
: 
: At this point, I started getting frustrated...

Actually, $* only applies to ^ and $, not \n.  So just leave it 0, and
treat \n like a normal character, and it should work fine.

If it DOESN'T work fine, it's a bug.

The manual should definitely be clearer...

Larry