Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!jpl-devvax!lwall
From: lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: perl bug (pl 44)
Message-ID: <11395@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
Date: 12 Feb 91 02:10:59 GMT
References: <DUPUY.91Feb8224616@hudson.cs.columbia.edu>
Reply-To: lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall)
Distribution: comp
Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA
Lines: 21

In article <DUPUY.91Feb8224616@hudson.cs.columbia.edu> dupuy@cs.columbia.edu writes:
: The following (erroneous?) script gets a memory fault on a Sun-4 running 4.0.3:
: 
: while (<>)
: {
:     ( $start, $end, $line ) =~ /(\d+)-(\d+):(.*\n)/;
: 
:     @foo = $start .. $end;
: 
: }

It's not really erroneous in the sense that it should do what you've
asked without core-dumping.  But you're not asking it for what you want:
the =~ should be an =.  But using =~ on a list should merely do the pattern
match on the last element, $line in this case.  The real problem is that
$start and $end are undefined--a program consisting of just the @foo line
will core-dump too, because of a null-pointer dereference (fixed in 4.0).

Thanks.

Larry