On Jun 30, Jeffrey Friedl said: >+so that if the regexp matched, e.g., C<$2> would contain 'cd' or 'ef'. For >+convenience, perl sets C<$+> to the string held by the highest numbered >+C<$1>, C<$2>, ... that got assigned (and, somewhat related, C<$^N> to the >+value of the C<$1>, C<$2>, ... most-recently assigned; i.e. the C<$1>, >+C<$2>, ... associated with the rightmost closing parenthesis used in the >+match). Does that make $^N equal to substr(???, $-[-1], $+[-1] - $-[-1]); If so, you might want to include that in the docs for @- and/or @+. -- Jeff "japhy" Pinyan japhy@pobox.com http://www.pobox.com/~japhy/ I am Marillion, the wielder of Ringril, known as Hesinaur, the Winter-Sun. Are you a Monk? http://www.perlmonks.com/ http://forums.perlguru.com/ Perl Programmer at RiskMetrics Group, Inc. http://www.riskmetrics.com/ Acacia Fraternity, Rensselaer Chapter. Brother #734 ** Manning Publications, Co, is publishing my Perl Regex book **