Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!swrinde!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!jpl-devvax!lwall
From: lwall@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov (Larry Wall)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: bug in R.E. ?
Message-ID: <1991May6.222221.10498@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov>
Date: 6 May 91 22:22:21 GMT
References: <1991May3.175219@sic.epfl.ch>
Reply-To: lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall)
Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA
Lines: 26

In article <1991May3.175219@sic.epfl.ch> brossard@sasun1.epfl.ch writes:
: 	So, shoudn't [\S]+ be equivalent to \S+ or [\S] to \S?

You won't find any documentation that says it works.  I only implemented
it for the lower case versions--it seemed too easy to say [^\s]+.
I suppose I could be argued out of this...

: 	Another bug I have tickled causes my perl script to core
: dump after printing a lot (>>100) lines with an error (?) message:
: 
: Word too long.
: Word too long.
: Word too long.

This is a message from your shell, not from perl.  Probably because you said:

:     @dirs = <$DIR[a-z]*>;

This makes use of the shell to do globbing, which has its advantages and
its disadvantages.  You've just discovered the primary disadvantage--shells
have arbitrary limits.

When writing a program like this, it's better to use opendir() and readdir().
It won't run into the limits of the shell, and it runs faster too.

Larry