substituting the pound sign

[calabama]

Greetings,

How do I go about substituting the pound sign?

my $OLDSTUFF1 =~ s/##/ /g;

Thanks

Cal

In the begining
Let us first assume that there was nothing to begin with.

 

[siberian]

Escape it

my $OLDSTUFF1 =~ s/\#\#/ /g;

 

[uida1154]

Standard rule with regular expressions: If it is special without an escape, add one. If it is not special without an escape, leave as is.

 

[spydersubmission]

That poses a question I've have many times before? What exactly are all the special characters? I escape everything that's questionable but I'm always told "Hey, why did you escape that? you don't need to

 

[siberian]

Anything that the regex interpreter wants to interprete must be escape to be viewed literally.

The problem you are having is that the regex interpeter is context sensitive. In some contexts things are literal in others they are not.

http://www.perldoc.com/perl5.8.0/pod/perlrequick.html#The-Guide

is a good place to start. From my perspective it has a lot to do with experience although the O'Reilly Regular Expressions books is very handy.