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From: wjb@moscom.UUCP (Bill de Beaubien)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Pattern matching
Message-ID: <2799@moscom.UUCP>
Date: 12 Jun 91 13:06:16 GMT
Reply-To: wjb@moscom.UUCP (Bill de Beaubien)
Organization: Moscom Corp., E. Rochester, NY
Lines: 23

While working on a Perl script a little while back, I found myself trying
to substitute occurances of the contents of a variable with nothing.  This
is a straight-forward thing, except that the string I was trying to match
on contained parentheses, which Perl took as RE parens rather the text 
parens.  Easy enough to solve, but the solution I came up with just didn't
appeal to me esthetically;  it seems kind of bulky, and I have to wonder
if there isn't a better way.  So, tell me... is there a better way?

This is the code I came up with;  The list I'm trying to remove from is
in $nodes{$elt}, and the pattern I'm trying to remove is in $elt. 

...
	$nodes{$elt} .= join(" ",@list);
	$ptrn=$elt;
	$ptrn=~s/([\(\)])/\\$1/g;
	($nodes{$elt}) =~ s/(.*)$ptrn(.*)/$1$2/
...

-- 
"Bless me, Father; I ate a lizard."
"Was it an abstinence day, and was it artificially prepared?"
-------------------------------------------------------------
Bill de Beaubien / wjb@moscom.com