There is a real good reason why there is an option for
changing the delimiter in pattern substitution. Witness
the following code I used to alter URLS that needed to
appear in a text field in a flatfile database:
while(<>){ #take input from STDIN
s/\/\//\\\/\\\//g;
print STDOUT;
}
Why? Because the designers of this flatfile database decreed
that "//" would be interpreted as the beginning of a
comment, thus causing everything after "http://" to be
lost. So I escaped those particular forward slashes using s///;
It looks atrocious, but it did the job.
Using an alternate delimiter wouldn't eliminate the need
for all the forward and back slashes, but at least it
would show me (or another trying to decipher the above
atrocity) where the expression was delimited.
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"Computeri non cogitant, ergo non sunt"
