Perl - Possible to store and execute a Regex in a variable?

Question

I have a short question: Is it possible to store a Regex as string in a variable (ok, I know that is possible) and then execute it?

Or is the only possibility to store and use the match and substitution pattern in a variable?

Thanks in advance for your help!

score 9 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 12 '13 at 11:35

9

You can use qr// quotes to keep a precompiled regex object in a scalar variable:

my $re = qr/foo/;

"foobar" =~ $re;        # works
"foobar" =~ /$re/;      # the same thing
"foobar" =~ /${re}bar/; # compose your regexes
"foobar" =~ s/$re/baz/; # use in substitutions
"$re"; # a version-dependent stringification of the regex
       # that is equivalent to your pattern.

answered Sep 12 '13 at 11:35

amon

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Thanks man, I overread the qr function in the perldoc! This is exactly what I wanted. – Mäx Müller Sep 12 '13 at 13:07

Perl - Possible to store and execute a Regex in a variable?

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