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From: lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: Detab function
Message-ID: <10502@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
Date: 21 Nov 90 18:21:08 GMT
References: <1990Nov20.182049.12017@uvaarpa.Virginia.EDU>
Reply-To: lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall)
Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA
Lines: 20

In article <1990Nov20.182049.12017@uvaarpa.Virginia.EDU> worley@compass.uucp writes:
: However, the apparently equivalent program
: 
: perl -pe '$spacing = 8; s/\t/" " x ($spacing - length($`) % $spacing)/eg;'
: 
: doesn't work, apparently because s///g doesn't work exactly as I
: expect.  I expect it to perform each search and replacement, and then
: start searching again in the modified string.  It appears (if I insert
: a strategic print) that the successive searches are done in the
: original string, and all modifications are in a copy of it.  (Is this
: what we really want?  Is this documented?)

I don't know if it's what you want, but it's what you get.  :-)

It's documented in The Book, somewhere...

The substitution code is a bit touchy, and if I fiddle with it much
I'll end up rewriting it, which I don't want to do right now.

Larry