Question

Is there a way to use a variable as modifier in a substitution?

my $search = 'looking';
my $replace = '"find: $1 ="';
my $modifier = 'ee';

s/$search/$replace/$modifier;

I need to use an array of hashes to make bulk search-replace with different modifiers.

Answer 1

Hm, if I had to do it I would do like this:

use warnings;
use strict;
my @stuff = (
{
    search => "this",
    replace => "that",
    modifier => "g",
},
{
    search => "ono",
    replace => "wendy",
    modifier => "i",
}
);
$_ = "this ono boo this\n";
for my $h (@stuff) {
    if ($h->{modifier} eq 'g') {
        s/$h->{search}/$h->{replace}/g;
    } elsif ($h->{modifier} eq 'i') {
        s/$h->{search}/$h->{replace}/i;
    }
    # etc.
}
print;

There are only so many different modifiers you might want to use so I think this is easy enough.

You can use eval for this, but it’s awfully messy.