Perl substitutions in Skype » Common Media, Inc.

Jul
16

We upgraded our Skype clients recently, and this afternoon made an accidental discovery of a hidden feature in Skype’s chat window.

If you make a spelling goof–or, indeed, nearly any other goof–in a message you’ve sent in Skype’s IM window, you can fix it using Perl’s substitution syntax. In other words, if I was to type

I sent it to you're work email

and commit that, I could then type

s/you're/your/

(which means, in Perl, “substitute the second term wherever you find the first”) it would correct my earlier gaffe, and change the timestamp to indicate that I’d edited the message.

This only appears to work in the most-recent message sent, of course.

Here it is in action: