Re: REGEXP removing - il- - -b-f and - il- - - - f

(really beginners) could think "@a" will empty array, which is not
true.


yes it is true, they are both empty lists:

 perl -mstrict -MData::Dumper -we 'my @x;my @y = ();print Dumper \@x, \@y;'

Show me any difference in @x and @y :)

Its about when and how its handled and the time it takes to handle it.

See John's excellent explanation earlier for more details.
.