you're executing qx() in list context. the second argument to encode_entities is a character range, though.

++ because this just as obvious now as subtle enough to make me suspect that I wouldn't have spotted it easily in the first place. Indeed I don't like qx and try to avoid it if possible. Here, even if only working on a given OS, I don't see why one should rely on an external cat utility to do something that perl can handle perfectly fine itself: we would want a cheap idiom for slurping a file, and one can be provided by File::Slurp which is also known to be more efficient than the builtins. OTOH if not wanting to use an external module, I (would) do:

print encode_entities do {
    open my $fh, '<', 'two-lines-with-one-slash-each.txt' or 
      die "D'Oh! $!\n";
    local $/;
    <$fh>;
};

[download]

If I wanted to stay even cheaper, I'd use @ARGV magic:

print encode_entities do { local (@ARGV,$/)='two-lines-with-one-slash-
+each.txt'; <> };

[download]

In reply to Re^2: HTML::Entities - Unmatched [ in regex by blazar
in thread HTML::Entities - Unmatched [ in regex by andreas1234567

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.