in reply to Re: Regex as an argument to a sub
in thread Regex as an argument to a sub

Am I doing something wrong? I need two e's, with a modified replacement pattern. Running with two e's on the original replacement gives a compile error.

use strict; use warnings; my $test_data = 'This is some test data: $888...!'; my $pattern = qr{(\$?[0-9,]+)}; my $replacement = '<test>$1<\/test>'; my $first_test = apply_regex_e($test_data, $pattern, $replacement); $replacement = 'q{<test>}.$1.q{<\/test>}'; my $second_test = apply_regex_ee($test_data, $pattern, $replacement); print $first_test, "\n", $second_test; sub apply_regex_e { my ($data, $pat, $rep) = @_; $data =~ s/$pat/$rep/e; return $data; } sub apply_regex_ee { my ($data, $pat, $rep) = @_; $data =~ s/$pat/$rep/ee; return $data; }

Output

This is some test data: <test>$1<\/test>...! This is some test data: <test>$888<\/test>...!

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^3: Regex as an argument to a sub
by Zaxo (Archbishop) on Sep 23, 2005 at 18:53 UTC

    Nope, you're doing it right, I missed a layer of eval. Since the substitute is a string variable containing another variable to interpolate, two evals are needed.

    After Compline,
    Zaxo

Re^3: Regex as an argument to a sub
by ambrus (Abbot) on Sep 24, 2005 at 16:47 UTC

    I'm sorry, but I don't really recommend Zaxo's double e solution for serious purposes, as two e modifiers will have to evaluate the code on the right side every time a match is found and the replacement has to be calculated. A double e switch should usually be avoioded, just like a string eval. (If this isn't clear, s/$pat/$rep/ee is about the same as s/$pat/eval($rep)/e, and here the eval has to be run every time the pattern matches the string.)

    A better solution would be to pass the replacement as a subroutine, so that the code doesn't have to be compiled multiple times. The first e modifier doesn't have to do this, as the code that generates the replacement string is always the same, so it doesn't have to be recompiled every time a match is found. (Of course, if the replace text is a constant string, you wouldn't need any e's.)

    (This is of course for the case of your apply_regex_ee, where the replacement has to be computed. If the replacement is a constant string, as in apply_regex_e, you don't even need a single e, although it doesn't make the solution any worse to have the e switch there.)

    Here's my version of the code. I'd like to thank chester for the clean example code.

    use strict; use warnings; my $test_data = 'This is some test data: $888...!'; my $pattern = qr{(\$?[0-9,]+)}; my $replacement = '<test>$1<\/test>'; my $first_test = replace_with_constant($test_data, $pattern, $replacem +ent); my $replacement_func = sub { "<test>" . $1 . "<\/test>"; }; # OR my $replacement_func = sub { "<test>$1<\/test>"; }; my $second_test = replace_with_dynamic($test_data, $pattern, $replacem +ent_func); print $first_test, "\n", $second_test, "\n"; sub replace_with_constant { my ($data, $pat, $rep) = @_; $data =~ s/$pat/$rep/; # OR $data =~ s/$pat/$rep/e; return $data; } sub replace_with_dynamic { my ($data, $pat, $rep) = @_; $data =~ s/$pat/&$rep()/e; return $data; }

    Update 2009 april 1: this seems to be a common question, Regular expression "replace string interpolation" problem asks it again.