SPUG: Metacharacters in variables in regular expressions

[John W. Krahn]

Christopher Howard wrote:
> I wanted to do something like this:
> 
> my $answer = <>;
> chomp $answer;
> if($some_earlier_var =~ /$answer/) { ### destroy the universe ### }
> 
> But I need $answer to be 'safe', so the metacharacters aren't 
> interpreted as such in the regex. What is the best thing to do here, then?
> 

[ snip ]

> 
> So this is what I want, right?:
> 
> if($some_earlier_var =~ /\Q$answer\E/) { ### destroy the universe ### }

Yes, or you could do it like this:

if(index{$some_earlier_var, $answer) >= 0) { ### destroy the universe ### }



John
-- 
Those people who think they know everything are a great
annoyance to those of us who do.        -- Isaac Asimov