How to pass regular expression as variable ?

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

Hi..

Could somebody guide me how could i pass regular expression as variable ?. Below is mo code and i have test but it not works.

The wildcard value will be NX* or NX*xml or NX???.dat and etc. Please help me

 if (defined($wildcard) && ($name =~ /$wildcard/)) {
                $ftp->get("$remotedir/$name","$localdir/$tmp") or $err
+=1;
                if ($err) {
                        print (LOGS "Can't collect file $wildcard from
+ dir $remotedir\n");
                        $ftp->quit;
                        last;
                } else {
                        rename ("$localdir/$tmp","$localdir/$fname");
                }
        }
[download]

Comment on How to pass regular expression as variable ? Download Code

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Re: How to pass regular expression as variable ? by Eliya (Vicar) on Apr 29, 2011 at 11:01 UTC
Maybe you're confusing regular expressions and shell wildcards? For example, `NX` - as a regex - means N followed by zero or more X, which might not be what you intended. Try `.` in place of `*` See perlre. And maybe also Regexp::Wildcards, in case you rather want to specify the patterns as wildcards. Or Text::Glob, to directly match wildcard patterns against a string.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: How to pass regular expression as variable ? by JavaFan (Canon) on Apr 29, 2011 at 11:01 UTC
You can use pass around strings: if you use them as a pattern, it will be a pattern (in that sense, regular expressions aren't different from numbers or strings). This is legal: `if ($var =~ "pattern") { .. }` [download] Or you could use a `qr` construct. See `man perlop` for details.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: How to pass regular expression as variable ? by Anonymous Monk on Apr 29, 2011 at 13:11 UTC
See "Regexp Quote-Like Operators" in perldoc perlop.	[reply]