Losing $1 and $2 variables in my search and replace expression

[laredotornado]

Hi,

I'm using Perl 5.12.3 on Mac 10.7.4. I have a file with lines that look like

AK=Alaska
AL-Alabama
....

and when I run this search and replace expression

perl -pi -e "s/(..)=(.*)/INSERT INTO cb_states (ABBREV, NAME) VALUES ('$1', '$2');/g" states.properties

The values of "$1" and "$2" result in empty strings in my file. That is, the output in the file is

INSERT INTO cb_states (ABBREV, NAME) VALUES ('', '');
INSERT INTO cb_states (ABBREV, NAME) VALUES ('', '');

What is the correct way to write the command line expression above to properly insert the matched values? Thanks,- Dave

 

[Rainer Weikusat]

I'm using Perl 5.12.3 on Mac 10.7.4. I have a file with lines that look like

AK=Alaska
AL-Alabama
...

and when I run this search and replace expression

perl -pi -e "s/(..)=(.*)/INSERT INTO cb_states (ABBREV, NAME) VALUES ('$1', '$2');/g" states.properties

The values of "$1" and "$2" result in empty strings in my file. That is, the output in the file is

INSERT INTO cb_states (ABBREV, NAME) VALUES ('', '');
INSERT INTO cb_states (ABBREV, NAME) VALUES ('', '');

What is the correct way to write the command line expression above
to properly insert the matched values?

Since the script is a double-quoted string, the shell will do variable
interpolations on it before passing it to perl, substituting its $1
and $2 into the expresssion. Since you want perl to do the
substituation, you need to stop the shell from doing so. One way:

"s/(..)=(.*)/INSERT INTO cb_states (ABBREV, NAME) VALUES ('\$1', '\$2');/g"