my($lhs, $mhs, $rhs) = ($`, $&, $');
# allows factoid arguments to be updated. -lear.
- $lhs =~ s/^(CMD: )?(.*)/$1 . lc $2/e;
+ $lhs =~ s/^(CMD: )?(.*)/$1||"" . lc $2/e;
- $lhs =~ tr/A-Z/a-z/;
- $lhs =~ s/^(the|da|an?)\s+//i; # discard article
+ # discard article.
+ $lhs =~ s/^(the|da|an?)\s+//i;
# remove excessive initial and final whitespaces.
$lhs =~ s/^\s+|\s+$//g;