Hello, thank you for your prompt response. It appears that s///eeg gives me part of what I want. It seems to interpolate the $1 when it is alone. But it is an incomplete solution for me. If instead of just getting rid of the brackets I want to replace them with words: 
#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;

sub replace {
    s/$_[0]/$_[1]/eeg;
}


$_ = 'a { b } c ( d ) e';

my $nobrackets = qr/[^\{^\}]+/;
replace(qr/\{($nobrackets)\}/, ' leftbracket $1 rightbracket '); # I w
+ant to replace the brackets with the words leftbracket and rightbrack
+et.

print "$_\n";

[download]
This appears to make the { b } vanish entirely.

In reply to Re^2: Regex - Is there any way to control when the contents of a variable are interpolated? (Using "$1" and '$1' in regex replacements) by JDoolin
in thread Regex - Is there any way to control when the contents of a variable are interpolated? (Using "$1" and '$1' in regex replacements) by JDoolin

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.