First, avoid using $a and $b; they're special.

If you are intending for $regexPattern to be a user supplied regex that may contain errors, then perhaps you want to *eval* the regex match and trap said errors.

my $matched;
my $contender = 'foo';
my $regexPattern = '+foo';  #won't work
eval { $matched = $contender =~ /$regexPattern/ }; warn $@ if $@;
print "Hey, did I survive the error? Yay!\n";

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In reply to Re: special characters in regexp by SuicideJunkie
in thread special characters in regexp by moked

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