run the perl script from a file? I know that sounds trite, but then you don't have to worry about the command line interpretting your escape characters literally - ideally if you can run it from the shell prompt, you can run the shell commands from within a perl script as well. On Tue, 16 Jan 2001, Austad, Jay wrote: > Doesn't work. I modified it because I'm calling it in a shell and some of > the chars were being interpreted by the shell. But it still doesn't work. > Nothing gets replaced. Any ideas? > > > perl -pi -e "s/\(\\W\)/\\\$1/ge" > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: Liz Burke-Scovill [mailto:kethry at winternet.com] > > Sent: Tuesday, January 16, 2001 1:13 PM > > To: 'tclug-list at mn-linux.org' > > Subject: Re: [TCLUG] perl regex question > > > > > > On Tue, 16 Jan 2001, Austad, Jay wrote: > > > > > Ok, I have this shell script that pipes some stuff to > > xargs. Some of the > > > stuff has lone single quotes in it and breaks the pipe to > > xargs because of > > > an unmatched quote error. So to fix this, I do something like: > > > > > > cat filname.txt | perl -pi -e "s/\'/\\\'/g" | xargs .... > > > > perl -pi -e "s/(\W)/\\$1/g" should do the trick - \W looks for all non > > alphanumeric characters - putting it in parenthesis turns it into a > > segment for backreferencing, $1 is the backreference variable > > > > > > > > How can I modify that perl statement so it will take single > > quotes, double > > > quotes, greater/less than signs, question marks, and > > asterisks, and replace > > > them with a backslash and then themselves? > > > > > > * would be \* > > > ? would be \? > > > " would be \" > > > and so on. > > > > > > I don't want to have a bunch of -e statements in my little > > perl command. > > > > > > Jay > > > _______________________________________________ > > > tclug-list mailing list > > > tclug-list at mn-linux.org > > > https://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list > > > > > > > -- > > Imagination is intelligence having fun... > > e-mail: kethry at winternet.com > > URL: http://WWW.winternet.com/~kethry/index.html > > > > _______________________________________________ > > tclug-list mailing list > > tclug-list at mn-linux.org > > https://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list > > > _______________________________________________ > tclug-list mailing list > tclug-list at mn-linux.org > https://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list > -- Imagination is intelligence having fun... e-mail: kethry at winternet.com URL: http://WWW.winternet.com/~kethry/index.html