Anonymous Monk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hello monks! My question has to do with patttern matching and parentheses. In particular, I have 2 files, like the following:
FILE1
jim( 4
john 5
mark 9

[download]

FILE2
jim( 4
john 5
mark 9

[download]

What I want to do is loop through FILE1, store names and numbers and then loop through FILE2 and, if I find the same name, print its number also. I have no problem with john and mark, but, when it comes to jim, I can't get Perl to match it because of the (
Note that if I had (jim) in both cases, it would be ok.
Thank you in advance

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: match ( ?
by FunkyMonk (Bishop) on Mar 31, 2008 at 18:12 UTC
    you need to quote it either using \Q ... \E or quotemeta: 
    my $jim = "jim(";
my $string = "A string with jim( in it";

print "yeah" if $string =~ m/\Q$jim\E/;

#or

$jim = quotemeta $jim;
print "yeah" if $string =~ m/$jim/;

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Re: match ( ?
by Fletch (Bishop) on Mar 31, 2008 at 18:18 UTC

    Alternately to quotemeta, use index instead of a regex to match plain strings without involving regexen.

    The cake is a lie.
    The cake is a lie.
    The cake is a lie.

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Re: match ( ?
by runrig (Abbot) on Mar 31, 2008 at 18:17 UTC
    Show us some code (what have you tried?), and then maybe we can help you with your homework.
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