Grep strings with special characters

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

How to grep strings with special characters?

#! /usr/bin/perl

my $url="<Url><![CDATA[http://abc.com/search?q=perl+grep+&ie=utf8&oe=u
+tf8&aq=t]></Url>";
my $str="dog";

my @f=("dog","<Url><![CDATA[http://abc.com/search?q=perl+grep+&ie=utf8
+&oe=utf8&aq=t]></Url>");

if(grep{/$url/}@f){print "Match!!\n";}
else {print "No match\n";}
[download]

The result is :

No match.

Comment on Grep strings with special characters Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Grep strings with special characters by prasadbabu (Prior) on Sep 13, 2010 at 06:50 UTC
Hi baski, Refer quotemeta. This will solve your problem. Prasad	[reply]
Re: Grep strings with special characters by suhailck (Friar) on Sep 13, 2010 at 07:42 UTC
Try `grep{/\Q$url\E/}@f`	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Grep strings with special characters by CountZero (Bishop) on Sep 13, 2010 at 14:14 UTC
To expand on what the Monks above already told you, the reason why your regular expression does not match is because it contains metacharacters, i. e. the characters `\ . ^ $ * + ? { } [ ] ( ) \|` If you want to match on any of them you need to escape them, i.e. put a backslash in front of each of them, but you can spare yourself the trouble by using the `quotemeta` function on the regex-string. CountZero A program should be light and agile, its subroutines connected like a string of pearls. The spirit and intent of the program should be retained throughout. There should be neither too little or too much, neither needless loops nor useless variables, neither lack of structure nor overwhelming rigidity." - The Tao of Programming, 4.1 - Geoffrey James	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Grep strings with special characters by repellent (Priest) on Sep 13, 2010 at 18:01 UTC
See index. `grep { index($_, $url) >= 0 } @f;` [download]	[reply] [d/l]