Extremely Basic Question: /^$/ and \n 1

[Meiguoren]

Hello all,

I know that /^$/ is used to match an "empty" line. But most "empty" lines contain a carriage return, right?

What follows are two "empty" lines:


If I use the following script on an input file containing nothing but two such blank lines, the substitution is successful:

open (INPUT, "input.txt"); 

while(<INPUT>){

s/^$/bass/;
print;

}

close INPUT;

But I know that the diamond operator <> reads up to and including a newline character (or whatever $/ is defined as at the time). So shouldn't the match see a '\n' and bail?

Thanks for your help.

 

[KevinADC]

the short answer is that the "$" anchor matches before a \n at the end of a line or string.

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- Kevin, perl coder unexceptional!