This is similar to $&
($MATCH
) except that it does not incur the performance penalty associated with that variable.
See "Performance issues" above.
In Perl v5.18 and earlier, it is only guaranteed to return a defined value when the pattern was compiled or executed with the /p
modifier. In Perl v5.20, the /p
modifier does nothing, so ${^MATCH}
does the same thing as $MATCH
.
This variable was added in Perl v5.10.0.
This variable is read-only and dynamically-scoped.