Re: RFC 110 (v3) counting matches

[Mark-Jason Dominus]

> On Mon, 28 Aug 2000, Mark-Jason Dominus wrote:
> 
> > But there is no convenient way to run the loop once for each date and
> > split the dates into pieces:
> > 
> >         # WRONG
> >         while (($mo, $dy, $yr) = ($string =~ /(\d\d)-(\d\d)-(\d\d)/g)) {
> >           ...
> >         }
> 
> What I use in a script of mine is:
> 
>     while ($string =~ /(\d\d)-(\d\d)-(\d\d)/g) {
>         ($mo, $dy, $yr) = ($1, $2, $3);
>     }
> 
> Although this, of course, also requires that you know the number of
> backreferences. 

The real problem I was trying to discuss was not this particular
application.  I was trying to point out a larger problem, which is
that there are several regex features that are enabled or disabled
depending on what context the match is in, so that if you want one
scalar-context feature and one list-context feature at the same time,
there is no direct way to do it.

> Nicer would be to be able to assign from @matchdata or something
> like that :)

I agree.  There are many operations that would be simpler if there was
a magic array that contained ($1, $2, $3, ...).  If anyone wants to
write an RFC on this, I will help.