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in reply to Faster way to regex this

Have you tried using a character class? 

$dir =~ s/([\[\]{}~*?])/\\$1/g;

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Re^2: Faster way to regex this
by AnomalousMonk (Archbishop) on Jun 08, 2014 at 11:04 UTC

    A look-ahead might be faster, but this still doesn't address the question of  \ (backslash) handling raised by Corion below. 

    c:\@Work\Perl\monks>perl -wMstrict -le
"my $s = 'foo\bar\[baz[x]x{x}x~x*x?x[]{}~*?';
 print qq{'$s'};
 ;;
 $s =~ s{ (?= [][{}~*?]) }{\\}xmsg;
 print qq{'$s'};
"
'foo\bar\[baz[x]x{x}x~x*x?x[]{}~*?'
'foo\bar\\[baz\[x\]x\{x\}x\~x\*x\?x\[\]\{\}\~\*\?'

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