> Is there some quick and dirty way to detect is a string is a pure string, or if it is a regular expression.

no, IMHO any $string can be used as a valid regex like in m/$string/ w/o syntax error.

but if you need a regex datatype to distinguish $scalars use qr// to generate them.

  DB<106> $s='abc'
 => "abc"
 
  DB<107> $r=qr/abc/
 => qr/abc/
 
  DB<108> ref $r eq 'Regexp'
 => 1
 
  DB<109> ref $s eq 'Regexp'
 => ""
  
  DB<110> 'xabcx'=~m/$r/
 => 1
 
  DB<111> 'xabcx'=~m/$s/
 => 1

[download]

Cheers Rolf

In reply to Re: Detecting if a string is a regular expression by LanX
in thread Detecting if a string is a regular expression by smontsar

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.