Why isn't matched text aliesed to $_ (topicalized) too? After all taking for example, and simplicity, a substitution (but the same would hold in a simple match) what one is doing is:
s/ ... / ... /
^^^ ^^^
^^^ ^^^
(1) (2)(1) Match this, then (2) do something with *it*.
The basic idea is that even if this would be seldom useful, and even in those cases it would save only a few charachters, it is IMHO much less
probable that one would like to use "outer" $_ in a closure than the matched text.
(Hopefully Perl6-ish) examples:
s/\b\d+/ { .num.hex() } /;
# ^^^^^^^^^^ Provided such a beast exists! s/ <complexstruct> / { m:w | <identifier> | } /;Yes, I know, that for any example I may think of (including better ones than these) one may come up with other ways to do it, but I nevertheless think that from the huffmanization point of view my proposal could be interesting...
PS: this is something that I'd like in the substitution part of a s///e operator in Perl5 too: do you know actual code in which $_ was really used there?
Michele -- $\=q.,.,$_=q.print' ,\g,,( w,a'c'e'h,,map{$_-=qif/g/;chr }107..q[..117,q)[map+hex,split//,join' ,2B,, w$ECDF078D3' F9'5F3014$,$,];];$\.=$/,s,q,32,g,s,g,112,g,y,' , q,,eval;
