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Re: [perl #128241] Deprecate /$empty_string/

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From:
demerphq
Date:
May 26, 2016 14:45
Subject:
Re: [perl #128241] Deprecate /$empty_string/
Message ID:
CANgJU+X_RYBt0OWvcQET7tTN1JCs1OMbURZp55xzu3_bTsv41A@mail.gmail.com
On 26 May 2016 01:01, "Father Chrysostomos via RT" <
perlbug-followup@perl.org> wrote:
>
> On Wed May 25 21:55:41 2016, sprout wrote:
> > It often comes up on the list that /$foo/ is subject to re-use of the
> > last match if $foo is empty, and most people then admit that it was a
> > mistake, and that the last match should be used only when the // is
> > syntactically empty.  (I believe we have consensus on this, but I may
> > be mistaken.)
> >
> > Because of backward-compatibility, we cannot simply change it, but we
> > could emit a deprecation warning whenever /$foo/ uses the last
> > successful match.
> >
> > I suspect this will catch many bugs in people’s code.  After the
> > deprecation cycle, we can make /$foo/ behave the same way as
> > /(?:$foo)/.
>
> I forgot to mention.  Anyone who intentionally wants /$foo/ to use the
previous match will also get the deprecation warning and change the code to
do it some other way.
>
> That said, we might want to change /$foo/ without a deprecation cycle,
since almost every use of it to mean last-successful-match is probably a
bug.  This should probably be done early in the dev cycle.
>
> In ticket #128225, Yves Orton wrote:
> > Fwiw i dont buy the back compat argument on this
> > one. I have never seen this feature deliberately
> > used, most people are unaware of it and when they
> > discover it they consider it a bug like in this
> > thread. In fact the only time I have seen it used
> > is in toy code that I wrote to demonstrate the
> > feature. I am convinced that nobody would notice
> > and that the *many* issues that have come from it
> > over the years justifies removing it entirely.
>
> Are you referring to the removal of // as referring to the last
successful match?

Yes.

> I am strongly opposed to that,

Ok. But

>but I don’t mind changing /$foo/-as-last-match, without a deprecation
cycle, if we do it soon.
>
> --
>
> Father Chrysostomos
>
>
> ---
> via perlbug:  queue: perl5 status: new
> https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=128241

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