No. \s*M\s* is a regexp. s/\s*M\s*/MALE/si is Perl code (consisting of a substitution operator with a regexp, a replacement string and some options for operands). To run Perl code, you need to use eval EXPR.
A simplistic example:
my $str = 'Hello World!';
# Alias $_ to $str.
foreach ($str) {
# Assumes each substitute operator is on a different line.
while (defined(my $code = <DATA>)) {
eval($code)
or die("Bad code at input line $.: $@\n");
}
}
print("$str\n"); # [hello world!]
__DATA__
s/^/[/g
s/$/]/g
s/([A-Z])/lc($1)/eg
An example allowing the reuse of the substitutions:
my @substitutions;
# Assumes each substitute operator is on a different line.
while (defined(my $code = <DATA>)) {
push @substitutions, eval("sub { $code }")
or die("Bad code at input line $.: $@\n");
}
my $str1 = 'Hello World!';
my $str2 = 'Good Day!';
# Alias $_ to the variable.
foreach ($str1, $str2) {
foreach my $substitution (@substitutions) {
$substitution->();
}
}
print("$str1\n"); # [hello world!]
print("$str2\n"); # [good day!]
__DATA__
s/^/[/g
s/$/]/g
s/([A-Z])/lc($1)/eg
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