Revert the parts of #3926 that outlawed character ranges

that have character classes such as \w as either endpoint.
This change re-establishes the old behavior which meant that
such ranges weren't really ranges, the "-" was literal.
Moreover, this change also fixes the old behavior to be
more consistent: [\w-.] and [\s-\w] worked, but [.-\w] didn't.
Now they all do work as described above.  The #3926 outlawed
all of those.

p4raw-id: //depot/cfgperl@4355

1 files changed, 6 insertions, 2 deletions

diff --git a/pod/perlre.pod b/pod/perlre.pod
index 9a06305629..1610254da5 100644
--- a/pod/perlre.pod
+++ b/pod/perlre.pod
@@ -185,8 +185,9 @@ Use C<\w+> to match a string of Perl-identifier characters (which isn't
 the same as matching an English word).  If C<use locale> is in effect, the
 list of alphabetic characters generated by C<\w> is taken from the
 current locale.  See L<perllocale>.  You may use C<\w>, C<\W>, C<\s>, C<\S>,
-C<\d>, and C<\D> within character classes (though not as either end of
-a range).  See L<utf8> for details about C<\pP>, C<\PP>, and C<\X>.
+C<\d>, and C<\D> within character classes, but if you try to use them
+as endpoints of a range, that's not a range, the "-" is understood literally.
+See L<utf8> for details about C<\pP>, C<\PP>, and C<\X>.
 
 The POSIX character class syntax
 
@@ -940,6 +941,9 @@ at the start or end of the list, or escape it with a backslash.  (The
 following all specify the same class of three characters: C<[-az]>,
 C<[az-]>, and C<[a\-z]>.  All are different from C<[a-z]>, which
 specifies a class containing twenty-six characters.)
+Also, if you try to use the character classes C<\w>, C<\W>, C<\s>,
+C<\S>, C<\d>, or C<\D> as endpoints of a range, that's not a range,
+the "-" is understood literally.
 
 Note also that the whole range idea is rather unportable between
 character sets--and even within character sets they may cause results