http://qs1969.pair.com?node_id=345417


in reply to Regular Expression from Hell

I think what you are looking for is:
if( $test =~ /^\d{4}$/ ) { ... }
This will match:
'^': anchor start of string
\d{4}: exactly 4 digits
$: anchor end of string

if you know it is always going to be digits, then length would probably be eaiser:
if( length($test) == 4 ) { ... }