Perl Function: quotemeta

Escape all non-word characters with a '\' character.

quotemeta.pl
my $s = ''; # Build a string holding characters 32 to 126 for( 32..126 ) { $s .= chr; } # Print the string and then show it again with all non-"word" characters backslashed. print "$s\n"; printf( "%s\n", quotemeta $s ); # $_ would be used if $s was ommited. # Now try and do the same as above with a pattern match and substitute. print "$s\n"; $s =~ s/([^A-Za-z0-9_])/\\$1/g; print "$s\n";
quotemeta.out
!"#$%&'()+,-./0123456789:;<=>?@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\]^_`abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz{\|}~ \ \!\"\#\$\%\&\'\(\)\\+\,\-\.\/0123456789\:\;\<\=\>\?\@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ\[\\\]\^_\`abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz\{\\|\}\~ !"#$%&'()+,-./0123456789:;<=>?@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\]^_`abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz{\|}~ \ \!\"\#\$\%\&\'\(\)\\+\,\-\.\/0123456789\:\;\<\=\>\?\@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ\[\\\]\^_\`abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz\{\\|\}\~

quotemeta.pl


my $s = '';

# Build a string holding characters 32 to 126
for( 32..126 )
{
    $s .= chr;
}

# Print the string and then show it again with all non-"word" characters backslashed.
print "$s\n";
printf( "%s\n", quotemeta $s ); # $_ would be used if $s was ommited.

# Now try and do the same as above with a pattern match and substitute.
print "$s\n";
$s =~ s/([^A-Za-z0-9_])/\\$1/g;
print "$s\n";

quotemeta.out


 !"#$%&'()*+,-./0123456789:;<=>?@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\]^_`abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz{|}~
\ \!\"\#\$\%\&\'\(\)\*\+\,\-\.\/0123456789\:\;\<\=\>\?\@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ\[\\\]\^_\`abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz\{\|\}\~
 !"#$%&'()*+,-./0123456789:;<=>?@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\]^_`abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz{|}~
\ \!\"\#\$\%\&\'\(\)\*\+\,\-\.\/0123456789\:\;\<\=\>\?\@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ\[\\\]\^_\`abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz\{\|\}\~