Using a variable with regular expression

[mountainbiker]

Say we have a pattern we want to match. This pattern is used many times in the program. For this example, lets say this is what we have:

/\d{8}.*\.html/;

Now lets make the pattern a variable, so the following would work:

$pattern = "\\d{8}.*\\.html";
/$pattern/;

Problem:
How can we avoid having to escape the '\' or other metachars in $pattern?

 

[MikeLacey]

MountainBiker

You can avoid having to quote / chars by using a different delimiter, like this:

s~search_string~replacement_text~;

You can't, as far as I know, avoid having to replace metachars in the search string itself. Mike

"Experience is the comb that Nature gives us, after we are bald."

Is that a haiku?
I never could get the hang
of writing those things.

 

[mountainbiker]

Here's what I what I ended up using

$file = "2002hello.html";

$pattern = q!\d{4}!; # instead of "\\d{4}"

if ($file =~ m/$pattern/){
print "a match\n";
} else {
print "NO match\n";
}