Re: is \1 vs $1 a necessary distinction?

Dave Storrs <[email protected]> writes:

> On 27 Sep 2000, Piers Cawley wrote:
> 
> > > 	Do we *want* to maintain \1?  Why have two notations to do the
> > 
> > I'm kind of curious about what happens when you want to do, say:
> > 
> >   if (m/(\S+)/) {
> >      $reg = qr{<(em|i|b)>($1)</\1>};
> >   }
> > 
> > where the $1 in the regex quote is refering to $1 from the previous
> > regex match.
> 
> 	Well, how about this:
> 
>       $reg = qr{<(em|i|b)>(${P1})</\1>};
> NOTE:                      ^^^^^	
> 
> 	If you assume that $1 and ${1} are equivalent (which makes it
> possible to have as many backrefs as you want), then you could say that,
> if the first character after the { is a P, it means "in the previous regex
> match."

Oh good ghod. That is *vile*.

-- 
Piers