Motherfuckin' Perl


$thingy = "asdf1.jpg";
$num = $thingy =~ s/.*/asdf/;
print $num;

Why the fuck is this outputting a "1" instead of "asdf"?

And now you have two problems!

You answered your own question. See:
Why the fuck is this outputting a "1" instead of "asdf"?
Motherfuckin' Perl

Obviously do:
$thingy = "asdf1.jpg";
$thingy =~ s/.*/asdf/;
$num = $thingy;
print $num;

Keep in mind that =~ is destructive, and changes the value of the left operand. What you assign to $num in your code is a value that indicates the success of the regex-replacement (in this case a true value, 1, because it indeed found something to replace). I recommend the book "Learning Perl" (O'Reilly) if you are interested in learning Perl.

it's not good practice to chain shit in any language.

$x =~ s/.*/asdf/ doesn't even need to be regex. It is exactly the same as $x = "asdf", only slower.

Because in scalar context =~ returns the number of matches. In list context it returns matches themselves. So:
($num) = $thingy =~ s/.*/asdf/;

Oh, nevermind, my mistake.

because perl is retarded.

WYPMP

>>7
Oh, thank you.

>>9
No, FFP, you are the retards!

You can also use the /r flag, which performs the substitution on a copy a returns it. This works and leaves $thingy untouched:

$thingy = "asdf1.jpg";
$num = $thingy =~ s/.*/asdf/r;
print $num;

note that /r was added in perl 5.14, so it won't work if you're using something old

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