I am reading data from a file then looking for this to occur in a different variable. If the data read from the file contains regular expression characters Perl tries to expand them before doing the comparison. This is an issue if the data file has something like "[A" in it since this then results in an unmatched [ in regex error. This can be simplified be removing the file reading and directly assigning as shown below... e.g. 
$Name = "[A";
$SearchInHere = "FredJimBert";
if ($SearchInHere =~/$Name/)
{
  DoSomething();
}

[download]
How do I stop the "[" in $Name from being interpreted as a regular expression control character? Remember... $Name is really read from a file so I can't escape it. I need to modify the search, not the source data. Regards, Steve

In reply to Stop variable expansion by Anonymous Monk

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.