BrowserUk's approach to your escaping problem is, of course, the way to go. However, in the hope that you may be spared some future headaches, a couple of features of the OPed code other than those already noted deserve comment.


my @special_characters = q{# $ % & ~ _ \\ { } ^};

This statement assigns a single element that is a string to an array (which it also creates). 

c:\@Work\Perl>perl -wMstrict -MData::Dump -le
"my @special_characters = q{# $ % & ~ _ \\ { } ^};
 dd \@special_characters;
 print 'number of elements in array: ', scalar @special_characters;
"
["# \$ % & ~ _ \\ { } ^"]

number of elements in array: 1

[download]
See perlintro, List value constructors in perldata.


foreach my $i (@special_characters) {
     $text =~ s/$special_characters[$i]/\\$&/g;
 }

This loops over the single element of the array, a string that is not numeric (i.e., doesn't "look like" a number; by default, Perl evaluates such a string to 0), and then uses the string as an index into the array. This should have produced a nice, fat warning. 

c:\@Work\Perl>perl -wMstrict -le
"my @special_characters = q{# $ % & ~ _ \\ { } ^};
 ;;
 foreach my $i (@special_characters) {
   print qq{>>$special_characters[$i]<<};
   }
"
Argument "# $ % & ~ _ \\ { } ^" isn't numeric in array element at -e l
+ine 1.
>># $ % & ~ _ \ { } ^<<

[download]

In reply to Re: Escape special characters for a LaTeX file by AnomalousMonk
in thread Escape special characters for a LaTeX file by marek1703

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