The =~ operator

The =~ operator

• Pattern matching can also be used to manipulate variables. In particular, many CGI scripts take advantage of the "=~" operator in conjunction with the substitution operator using the format

  $variable_name =~
  s/[string_to_remove]/[string_to_add]/gi; 
  

• For example, if we want to censor every occurrence of the word "Frack" from the client-defined input field "comment", we might use the line

  $form_data{'comments'} =~ s/frack/censored/gi; 
  

Additional Resources:

• Perl
• Perl Resources

String Modifiers
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Using the split and join functions