substr documentation in perldoc

[Athanasius]

Hi,

Searching perldoc (Perl 5 version 14.1) for the built-in 'substr' function
gives:

substr EXPR,OFFSET,LENGTH,REPLACEMENT
substr EXPR,OFFSET,LENGTH
substr EXPR,OFFSET

Extracts a substring out of EXPR and returns it. First character is at
offset 0 ...

Is "0" a typo for "OFFSET" -- that is, should the first sentence be: "First
character is at offset OFFSET..." -- or am I just confused?

Thanks,
Athanasius <°(((>< contra mundum

 

[Owen]

Hi,

Searching perldoc (Perl 5 version 14.1) for the built-in 'substr' function
gives:

No, that is 0, the way you count is 0,1,2, .... so the first character is at position 0. If the offset is say 3, then the string is taken from starting at the 4th character.


Owen

 

[Jürgen Exner]

Searching perldoc (Perl 5 version 14.1) for the built-in 'substr' function
gives:


Is "0" a typo for "OFFSET" -- that is, should the first sentence be: "First
character is at offset OFFSET..." -- or am I just confused?

Read that as "first character _of_the_original_string_ is at offset 0,
i.e. if you want to retrieve the first character of the original string,
then you have to use offset 0.

jue

 

[Athanasius]

Read that as "first character _of_the_original_string_ is at offset 0,
i.e. if you want to retrieve the first character of the original string,
then you have to use offset 0.

Ok, I guess that makes sense. (But, I still think this way of putting
things reads like "documentation" =~ s/document/obfusc/ ;-) .)

Thanks Jue and Owen for your prompt replies.

Athanasius <°(((>< contra mundum