[lug] Perl question: how to print embedded metacharacters

[Chip Atkinson]

No, unfortunately.  

The problem is that the script reads the string in from the command file,
so I need to interpret the string before printing it.  Here's another
example:
---------------------
chip at chip-desktop:~$ cat try2.pl
#!/usr/bin/perl

#my $kw = 'abc\ndef';
#my $nv = "${\($kw)}";

while (<>) {
  print "$_";
}
chip at chip-desktop:~$ echo 'abc\ndef' | ./try2.pl
abc\ndef
chip at chip-desktop:~$ 
---------------------------------
In a sense, I need the opposite of quotemeta -- something that takes in a
string and does the metacharacter replacements.

I know that something like
while (<>) {
  s/\\n/\n/g;
  # etc. for all metacharacter sequences...
  print;
}

would work but I wanted to avoid the "etc. for all metacharacter
sequences"

Hopefully that's more understandable.

Chip

On Wed, 25 Nov 2009, Jeffrey Haemer wrote:

> Chip,
> 
> Can you do this instead?
> 
> my $kw = "abc\ndef";
> 
> If not, can you explain in enough detail that I can try again? :-)
> 
> On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 8:29 AM, Chip Atkinson <chip at pupman.com> wrote:
> 
> > Greetings,
> >
> > I'm working on a perl script that reads strings from a configuration file
> > and prints them out.  What I'd like to be able to do is have any embedded
> > metacharacters interpreted but I'd like to avoid doing the substitutions
> > myself.
> >
> > For example, here is a little script to emulate the problem:
> >
> > #!/usr/bin/perl
> >
> > my $kw = 'abc\ndef';
> >
> > print "$kw";
> > ----------------------
> > the output is
> > abc\ndef
> >
> > What I want is
> > abc
> > def
> >
> > --------------
> > I tried to jfgi but no joy.
> >
> > Thanks in advance.
> >
> > Chip
> >
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> 
> 
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> Jeffrey Haemer <jeffrey.haemer at gmail.com>
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