Re: Regular expression help: why does this not match?

'?' is a regex metacharacter for optional. It doesn't match a literal '?'.

'.' is also, but it will only surprise you later. It does match literal '.'.

You can write,

if ($a =~ /\Q$b\E/) {
# . . . 
}
[download]

to get all characters in $b taken as literal.

BTW, $a and $b are special to sort, so shouldn't be chosen as user variable names.

After Compline,
Zaxo

Comment on Re: Regular expression help: why does this not match? Download Code

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Re^2: Regular expression help: why does this not match? by lokiloki (Beadle) on Jan 18, 2007 at 23:00 UTC
yes, i figured that... so if i have a very long string that contains multiple possible regex metacharacters, how can i do a match and tell that match to "ignore" any such metacharacters? or do i have to process the string first and backslash all of them??	[reply]
Re^3: Regular expression help: why does this not match? by ikegami (Patriarch) on Jan 18, 2007 at 23:49 UTC
Or don't use a regexp at all. `$a =~ /^\Q$b\E\z/` is equivalent to `$a eq $b` `$a =~ /\Q$b\E/` is equivalent to `index($a, $b) >= 0` Case-insensitive versions: `$a =~ /^\Q$b\E\z/i` is equivalent to `lc($a) eq lc($b)` `$a =~ /\Q$b\E/i` is equivalent to `index(lc($a), lc($b)) >= 0`	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^3: Regular expression help: why does this not match? by Zaxo (Archbishop) on Jan 18, 2007 at 23:06 UTC
quotemeta or \Q as I added to my original reply. After Compline, Zaxo	[reply]