I'm learning Perl on my own and I'd like someone to shed a little light on the usefulness of the Perl plain old documentation (POD). For example, I was recently trying to figure out the difference between the /s and /m modifiers for pattern matching. The pod says:

/s Treat string as single line
/m Treat string as multiple lines

Honestly, how useful is that? The pod is totally silent about how the ".", "$", "^", and newline characters get handled based upon these modifiers.

So I'd like to know: Where does everyone else turn when they need clarification on Perl syntax? Does anyone else who is not a Perl veteran really find the pod that useful?

2001-03-26 Edit by Corion : Moved from Seekers Of Perl Wisdom to Meditations

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