Question

According to the perldoc, the syntax for split is:

split /PATTERN/,EXPR,LIMIT

But the PATTERN can also be a single- or double-quoted string: split "PATTERN", EXPR. What difference does it make?

Edit: A difference I’m aware of is splitting on backslashes: split /\\/ vs split '\\'. The second form doesn’t work.

Answer 1

It looks like it uses that as “an expression to specify patterns”:

The pattern /PATTERN/ may be replaced
with an expression to specify patterns
that vary at runtime. (To do runtime
compilation only once, use
/$variable/o .)

edit: I tested it with this:

my $foo = 'a:b:c,d,e';
print join(' ', split("[:,]", $foo)), "\n";
print join(' ', split(/[:,]/, $foo)), "\n";
print join(' ', split(/\Q[:,]\E/, $foo)), "\n";

Except for the ' ' special case, it looks just like a regular expression.