Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!mcnc!uvaarpa!mmdf
From: marc@athena.mit.edu (Marc Horowitz)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: s///e bizarreness
Message-ID: <1991Jan3.043016.27394@uvaarpa.Virginia.EDU>
Date: 3 Jan 91 04:30:16 GMT
Sender: mmdf@uvaarpa.Virginia.EDU (Uvaarpa Mail System)
Reply-To: marc@mit.edu
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 24

I noticed this strange behavior yesterday:

% perl -e '$_="|2+2|";s/\|([^\|]*)\|/$1/;print "$_\n";'
2+2
% perl -e '$_="|2+2|";s/\|([^\|]*)\|/$1/e;print "$_\n";'
2+2
% perl -e '$_="|2+2|";s/\|([^\|]*)\|/$1/ee;print "$_\n";'
4
% perl -v

This is perl, version 3.0

$Header: perly.c,v 3.0.1.9 90/11/10 01:53:26 lwall Locked $
Patch level: 41


The first one makes sense.  The last two are what's confusing me.  Is
this a bug, or an undocumented feature (or both? :-) I tested this on
a vax running bsd 4.3, perl compiled with gcc 1.37 and a decmips
running Ultrix 3.1, perl compiled with "gcc version 1.37.1 OSF
1.9.2.13 Ultrix Dec Mips Dec 14 1990."  Shouldn't the second program
print "4" and the third be an error?

		Marc