The short question: I need to use variables in a regex, these variables contain filenames, these filenames contain every character under the sun including regex special character. I need to knwo how to use a variable within a regex when it might have characters that screw with the regex.

here is the code sample for where my program messes up and an example of an error: 
    $Title =~ s,^$Artist\s*-\s*,,ig; //Remove artist name from string

[download]
/stuff/Audio/Techno/Trance[]Control
Unmatched [ in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/^trance[ <-- HERE ]contr
+ol\s*-\s*/ at ./builddb.pl line 121.

[download]
--In this case the artist name is: Trance[]Control

I have tried writing my own clean functions that escape characters but Ia lways miss something and find out long after that I messed up once it is too late to do anything about it.

The situation description: Basically I am running scripts that I am writing as I need them, these script are fixing some major problems in a set of over 30,000 files and it deals with both file name info and meta info to try and make sence of it all. Using perl I have made TONS of progress. However these files can have any character including (,),[,]
-Exodist

In reply to Make a variable safe for a regex. by exodist

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