customize string issue

[emilford]

I have a variable that I want to allow users of my script to be able to customize. It's simply a variable that they can use to store a couple of sentences to be sent out in an email. I'm wondering what the best approach for doing this would be. I initially had it in a set of single quotes, but people would constantly email me saying the script wasn't working correctly and 9 times out of 10 it was because they included a single quote in the variable value without escaping it. I can't blame them if they just didn't know, but I need a work around for this. Is there a construct I could use to avoid any "illegal" characters someone could add to the variable value?

[sauoq]

It's probably better to require them put their message in another file and then read that in with your script... but, if you are set on allowing them to edit the script, I suggest using a here document with single quotes:

my $message =<<'END_OF_MESSAGE';

They can put pretty much whatever they want in here except for the 
string 'END_OF_MESSAGE' on a line by itself.

END_OF_MESSAGE

-sauoq
"My two cents aren't worth a dime.";

[edan]

I agree 100% with sauoq in that you should always try to separate user-configurable stuff from the script itself into a config file of some sort. But again, if you feel that it must be inside your script, in the spirit of TIMTOWTDI, another way would be:

local $/ = undef;
my $user_defined_string = <DATA>;

# script here

# USER:  put your text after the __DATA__ token, but leave that line a
+lone!
__DATA__
blah blah blah
and more of the same

--
3dan