Metacharacters in a variable as literals in regex

Anonymous Monk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hi I am reasonably new to perl. I don't know how to frame a regex such that metacharacters in variables are treated literally. I would not know what these metacharacters will be before hand. Thanks. S

Comment on Metacharacters in a variable as literals in regex

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Metacharacters in a variable as literals in regex by Abigail-II (Bishop) on Oct 09, 2003 at 11:52 UTC
`/\Q$variable\E/;` [download] See also the 'perlre' manual page. Abigail	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Metacharacters in a variable as literals in regex by flounder99 (Friar) on Oct 09, 2003 at 12:23 UTC
There is also `quotemeta`. Which does the same thing as `\Q ... \E` but outside the `m//`. `$quotedregex = quotemeta $unquotedregex; m/$quotedregex/;` [download] -- flounder	[reply] [d/l] [select]