Turning your code into one statement is such a weird requirement, but it's easy to do 

my $fixed = $ptext
   =~ s/^\"//r
   =~ s/\"$//r
   =~ s/^\'//r
   =~ s/\'$//r
   =~ s/\'/\\\'/gr
   =~ s/\"/\\\"/gr
   =~ s/\{/\\\{/gr;

[download]

It's not how I'd do it, though.

In reply to Re: Regexp and metacharacters by ikegami
in thread Regexp and metacharacters by Largins

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