With inspiration from
davorg's above example, taking it
a step further (and a step further (and a step further (...))):
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
my %trans = (
'$name' => 'Frank',
'$color' => 'Cherry Red',
'$time' => sprintf ("%d:%02d:%02d",
(localtime(time))[2,1,0]),
'$date' => sprintf ("%04d-%02d-%02d",
(localtime(time))[5] + 1900,
(localtime(time))[4] + 1,
(localtime(time))[3]),
'$dstr' => '$time on $date',
);
my ($trans_rx) = join ('|', sort { length($b) - length($a) }
sort
map { quotemeta ($_) }
keys %trans);
my ($string) = 'I\'m $name and I prefer $color objects, at least
+on $dstr';
while ($string =~ s!($trans_rx)!$trans{$1}!o) { }
print "$string\n";
For output like:
I'm Frank and I prefer Cherry Red objects, at least on 15:33:43 o
+n 2001-02-06
This version doesn't replace stray references to things like
$1.95 with nothing, but it might get caught in a loop if you
specify two entries which convert to eachother recursively
such that "$a -> $b" and "$b -> $a".