Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.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: "MOST COMMON NOVICE BUG" contest
Message-ID: <7385@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
Date: 12 Mar 90 21:49:57 GMT
References: <15230@bfmny0.UU.NET> <15232@bfmny0.UU.NET> <1118@etnibsd.UUCP> <1990Mar10.210646.16041@NCoast.ORG> <16731@orstcs.CS.ORST.EDU> <9306@stiatl.UUCP>
Reply-To: lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall)
Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA
Lines: 13

In article <9306@stiatl.UUCP> pda@stiatl.UUCP (Paul D. Anderson) writes:
: pvo@sapphire.OCE.ORST.EDU (Paul O'Neill) writes:
: 
: >I keep thinking split() has a default delimiter. (' ')
: 
: Me too!  And when I remember that I have to give it a delimiter,
: I invariably use a literal instead of a regexp.

Which should work just fine (at least until you use a regexp metacharacter).
Perl even recognizes that your "runtime" expression is invariant and turns
it into a compile-once expression.

Larry