my $pattern = quotemeta 'Category("notestrecord")';
[download]

Yes it worked!

my $line = '        [Category("notestrecord")]';
my $pattern = 'Category("notestrecord")';

if($line =~ /\Q$pattern/)
{
    print "We have a match!";
}
else
{
    print "No match!";
}
[download]

my $pattern = 'Category\("notestrecord"\)';
[download]

Yes, sure this works, and that's essentially what quotemeta is doing to your string..
Je suis Charlie.

my $line    = '        [Category("notestrecord")]';
my $pattern = 'Category("notestrecord")';

if (index($line, $pattern) >= 0) {
    print "We have a match!\n";
} else {
    print "No match!\n";
}
[download]

if (index($line, $pattern) >= 0) { ... }
[download]

Using qr (quote regex-wise) and allowing for the spaces in $line also works:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use 5.018;

# 1126143

my $line = '        [Category("notestrecord")]';
my $pattern = qr/[Category("notestrecord")]/;
 
if($line =~ /\s*$pattern/)
{
     print "Matched |$pattern| in |$line|";  # vbars to show spaces (&
+ lack of spaces)
}  else  {
     print "No match!";
}

=head OUTPUT:

Matched |(?^u:[Category("notestrecord")])| in |        [Category("note
+strecord")]|

=cut
[download]

Using qr (quote regex-wise) and allowing for the spaces in $line also works:

use 5.018;

my $line = '        [Category("notestrecord")]';
my $pattern = qr/[Category("notestrecord")]/;
 
if($line =~ /\s*$pattern/)
[download]

Are sure that qr// in combination with use 5.018 magically adds the missing quotemeta? My perl 5.18.1 does not show that behavior:

>perl -e 'use 5.018; my $x=qr/a[bc]d/; say("|$_| matches |$x|: ",$_=~/
+$x/ ? "yes" : "no") for ( "abd","acd","abcd","a[bc]d" )'
|abd| matches |(?^u:a[bc]d)|: yes
|acd| matches |(?^u:a[bc]d)|: yes
|abcd| matches |(?^u:a[bc]d)|: no
|a[bc]d| matches |(?^u:a[bc]d)|: no
>
[download]

Your script matches $line against zero or more whitespace characters, followed by one of the characters "()Cacdegnorsty. The C in $line matches this condition.

I can freely change the order of characters and remove duplicates in qr/[]/ without changing the script output:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use 5.018;

# 1126143

my $line = '        [Category("notestrecord")]';
my $pattern = qr/["()Cacdegnorsty]/;

if($line =~ /\s*$pattern/)
{
     print "Matched |$pattern| in |$line|";  # vbars to show spaces (&
+ lack of spaces)
}  else  {
     print "No match!";
}

=head OUTPUT:

Matched |(?^u:[Category("notestrecord")])| in |        [Category("note
+strecord")]|

=cut
[download]

>perl 1126159-modified.pl
Matched |(?^u:["()Cacdegnorsty])| in |        [Category("notestrecord"
+)]|
>
[download]

Alexander

--
Today I will gladly share my knowledge and experience, for there are no sweeter words than "I told you so". ;-)

afoken: I think you're right on all counts, but have not satisfied myself that I understand the implications of the discussion of 'normaliz(ation) in http://perldoc.perl.org/perlop.html#Regexp-Quote-Like-Operators.

Just BTW (and it seems to make no difference in my experiments, your Line 7 lacks the closing double-quote found in OP's datum... but I've (so far) found no docs explaining why quantification isn't required (could it be related to some aspect of normalization?).

The text and example make it clear that qr() (except when using

qr"..." delimiters) normalizes the expression -- re-orders the content
+s as in your examples.</p>

<p>And my attempts to requote (using <c>\"
[download]

or qq your *nix-ish one-liners have come up (badly!) short... so this is merely an interim response on those.

Clearly, I have more reading to do (but pointers are welcome)!

UPDATE: (after TWO cups) Even more clearly, coffee must be kicking in: it finally occured to me to do the nix-win translation in a file (1126143afoken-222.pl) rather than as a one-liner.

The results match yours:

|abd| matches |(?^u:a[bc]d)|: yes
|acd| matches |(?^u:a[bc]d)|: yes
|abcd| matches |(?^u:a[bc]d)|: no
|a[bc]d| matches |(?^u:a[bc]d)|: no
[download]

But, informative pointers remain very welcome!




++$anecdote ne $data
...and that's surely a problem, so far, with this reply.

check Ln42!