what does /^[^ ]/ mean in perl?

[Monica Pnade]

what does /^[^ ]/ mean in perl?

[toolic]

It is a regular expression which matches any non-space character at the beginning of a string.

perlre

YAPE::Regex::Ex plain

use strict;
use warnings;

use YAPE::Regex::Explain;
print YAPE::Regex::Explain->new(qr/^[^ ]/)->explain();

__END__

The regular expression:

(?-imsx:^[^ ])

matches as follows:

NODE                     EXPLANATION
----------------------------------------------------------------------
(?-imsx:                 group, but do not capture (case-sensitive)
                         (with ^ and $ matching normally) (with . not
                         matching \n) (matching whitespace and #
                         normally):
----------------------------------------------------------------------
  ^                        the beginning of the string
----------------------------------------------------------------------
  [^ ]                     any character except: ' '
----------------------------------------------------------------------
)                        end of grouping
----------------------------------------------------------------------