Run 'perldoc perlop' at the command-line. Check out the section about the "Conditional Operator" for the first question, and the second question will be under "Quote and Quote-like Operators", in the "m/PATTERN/cgimosx" section.
-----Original Message----- From: Ryan Moszynski [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, July 14, 2006 4:04 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; beginners@perl.org Subject: awesome help, but, a question <snip> what are the ':'s doing?, and lastly, what is eg? <snip> ######## $str =~ s/(?:(\d+)-(\d+)|(\d+));?/ $3 ? '' : ($2 > $1 ? '' : 'y') /eg; '' eq $str; ######## <snip> -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <http://learn.perl.org/> <http://learn.perl.org/first-response>