quotemeta is close but not a perfect fit. It will escape (with a backslash) any non-alphanumeric which includes ALL punctuation and even spaces.

In most dialects of SQL, quotes are escaped by doubling them: 

he said, "I'LL be back"

[download]
Would need to become: 
'he said, "I''LL be back"'

[download]
Using the example given by the questioner. There's no need to escape other punctuation or spaces. And I said most, because the quoting given by DBI::quote() will match that required by the database transparently.

Update OK, alfie so you updated your reply while I was writing that. And ++ for the bit about asking for an e-mail.

-- iakobski

In reply to Re: Re: unpacking - html re-encoding? by iakobski
in thread unpacking - html re-encoding? by Mac

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.