Combining a Variable and Regular Expression in Perl

Question

I have the code:

$TEMP =~ s/\#NAME\#/$customerName/g;

Where I am replacing #NAME# with the value in $customername using Regex. What I want to do is append a variable onto the end of NAME.

So I want to do something like:

$TEMP =~ s/\#NAME . $appendValue\#/$customerName/g;

so it will essentially be:

$TEMP =~ s/\#NAME_1\#/$customerName/g;

Would this work or is there a proper way to handle this?

Test Cases:

Hello #NAME#
This is only intended for #NAME#

Two things: # is not a metacharacter (and therefore doesn't need to be escaped), and you probably want to use \Q...\E to quote any potential metacharacters contained inside your variable. Have you tried anything yet? — Matt Jacob
– Matt Jacob, Commented Jul 27, 2017 at 20:41
@MattJacob I'm rather inexperienced with Perl and am editing someone else's script. I have not because I kind of need to know if this is possible for the type of script I am creating. Basically it will look for different strings in different templates for emails. Based on prior criteria the appendValue will be different. — Elias
– Elias, Commented Jul 27, 2017 at 20:44

choroba · Accepted Answer · 2017-07-27 20:45:43Z

3

The pattern interpolates variables, so no concatenation operator is needed:

$TEMP =~ s/#NAME$appendValue#/$customerName/g;

You might need to protect special characters in the variable, though, so use \Q...\E:

$TEMP =~ s/#NAME\Q$appendValue\E#/$customerName/g;

# is not special in a regex, so no backslash is needed (but it doesn't hurt).

answered Jul 27, 2017 at 20:45

choroba

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1 Comment

Elias Over a year ago

Thank you. I inherited this script in a language I have 0 experience with and I don't have much experience with Regex either. I will try this and mark you as answered if it works. Or be back with more questions.

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