SPUG: reg exp generator

[Benjamin Turner]

On Monday, July 29, 2002, at 01:44  PM, Baker, Stephen M wrote:

>
> I have a program needing with the following array:
>
> @LINES	=	qw(	#any line from file here
>
> 				);
>
> That at the present time I want to do the following:
>
> foreach $line (@LINES){
> 	$line =~ s/$line/$CONSTANT_MOD_LINE/
> }
>
> The goal is that a user can put a line from an output file into 
> the array,
> and my program will take the line and essentially comment out 
> any lines in
> all files that contain the user's selected line... however, my 
> original idea
> was to do this using regular expressions and since some lines have a or
> multiple period(s) or asteric(s) the reg exp is giving me some 
> trouble...
> any ideas on how to change ordinary text, especially periods 
> and asterics
> into reg exp friendly characters?

	You want your regexp line to look like this:

$line =~ s/\Q$line\E/$CONSTANT_MOD_LINE/;

	The \Q...\E will regexp-escape all regexp-special characters 
between them. This should be documented in 'perldoc perlre' if 
you need further explanation.
		Ben

--
Benjamin John Turner          |  bjturner at bigfoot.com
http://www.usfca.edu/turner/  |  bjturner at mac.com

"The happiest of people don't necessarily have the best of 
everything; they just make the most of everything that comes 
along their way."


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