Quoth public@khwilliamson.com (karl williamson): > > +Starting in Perl 5.14, a C<.> (dot) immediately after the C<?> is a > +shorthand equivalent to C<-imsx>. Any positive or negative flags may > +follow the dot, so > + > + (?.x-i:foo) > + > +is equivalent to > + > + (?x-ims:foo) > + > +(The C<-i> wasn't necessary, but did no harm.) FWIW I'm not convinced allowing (?.-i:) is useful. It's always redundant, and I suspect would just be confusing. The way I would document this is (?.xi:foo) has exactly the flags /xi, regardless of where it is interpolated. (?x-i:foo), by contrast, will 'inherit' flags from the outside if they aren't specified explicitly. I see (?.xi:) as the 'simple' case, and the existing syntax as more complicated. It's only a side-effect of the implementation that it's easier to inherit flags when interpolating than to preserve them. Yves: if it helps, (?x-s:foo) is analogous to chmod a+r-w foo, and (?.x:foo) is analogous to chmod a=r foo. BenThread Previous | Thread Next