My question I'm sure could have been phrased better. Basically what I was thinking is there are certain times when you might want to use an expression without requiring the module. (Normally I would just want to stick with "use"ing it and getting the benefit of the module's maintainence), so I was curious if there was a way to go from a compiled expression to something I could add to a script without requiring the module for the one regex.

A simple example but if I wanted a pattern to match a real but didn't want to require Regexp::Common I could do something like this.

#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;

use Regexp::Common qw/number/;
use YAPE::Regex::Explain;

print YAPE::Regex::Explain->new($RE{num}{real})->explain();
__END__
The regular expression:

(?-imsx:(?:(?i)(?:[+-]?)(?:(?=[0123456789]|[.])(?:[0123456789]*)(?:(?:
+[.])(?:[0123456789]{0,}))?)(?:(?:[E])(?:(?:[+-]?)(?:[0123456789]+))|)
+))

matches as follows:
  
NODE                     EXPLANATION
------------------------------------------------------------BLAH BLAH 
+BLAH
[download]

and just add

$thing=~/(?-imsx:(?:(?i)(?:[+-]?)(?:(?=[0123456789]|[.])(?:[0123456789
+]*)(?:(?:[.])(?:[0123456789]{0,}))?)(?:(?:[E])(?:(?:[+-]?)(?:[0123456
+789]+))|)))
/
[download]

to my code.

Which seems like it works but as regex's are my weakest Perl strength, I didn't know if this is a any caveats (things known not to work) with this approach or if there is a more reliable way of doing it. Obviously "cutting and pasting" is a bad idea without total understanding is in general though as far as regexes, I'm willing to put stock in a few monks work (yourself included), but I didn't know if there was anything inherently wrong with the approach.

-Lee

"To be civilized is to deny one's nature."