${^PREMATCH}

${^PREMATCH}

This is similar to $` ($PREMATCH) 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 ${^PREMATCH} does the same thing as $PREMATCH .

This variable was added in Perl v5.10.0.

This variable is read-only and dynamically-scoped.