[doc] paragraph mode discards any number of newlines at the beginning of the file

[learnbyexample]

Where

https://perldoc.perl.org/perlvar#$/

Description

The document says:

When $/ is set to "" and the entire file is read in with that setting, any sequence of consecutive newlines "\n\n" at the beginning of the file is discarded.

On testing, I find that a single newline at the beginning of the file is also discarded:

$ s='\na\nb\n\n12\n34\n\nhi'

$ printf '%b' "$s" | perl -00 -lnE 'say if $. == 1'
a
b

I don't think this is a bug, as this behavior is seen with awk too:

$ printf '%b' "$s" | awk -v RS= 'NR==1'
a
b

[khwilliamson]

Taking a legalistic view, a single \n can be construed as "any sequence of newlines". But what would you like it to say instead?

[learnbyexample]

any sequence of newlines

That would be fine with me, currently it says

any sequence of consecutive newlines "\n\n"

[Grinnz]

Perhaps it would be clearest to say: "any sequence of one or more consecutive newlines"

[khwilliamson]

On 11/26/20 6:38 PM, Dan Book wrote: Perhaps it would be clearest to say: "any sequence of 1 or more consecutive newlines"

That sounds good to me; anyone want to prepare a patch?