• NAME
• SYNOPSIS
• DESCRIPTION
  • qc
  • qc_to
  • qcw
  • Backslash escape sequences
• AUTHOR
• COPYRIGHT & LICENSE

NAME

Quote::Code - quoted strings with arbitrary code interpolation

SYNOPSIS

 use Quote::Code;
 print qc"2 + 2 = {2 + 2}";  # "2 + 2 is 4"
 my $msg = qc{The {$obj->name()} is {$obj->state()}.};
 
 my $heredoc = qc_to <<'EOT';
 .trigger:hover .message:after {
   content: "The #{get_adjective()} brown fox #{get_verb()} over the lazy dog.";
 }
 EOT
 print $heredoc;

 my $name = "A B C";
 my @words = qcw(
   foo
   bar\ baz
   {2 + 2}
   ({$name})
 );
 # @words = ("foo", "bar baz", "4", "(A B C)");

DESCRIPTION

This module provides the new keywords qc, qc_to and qcw.

qc

qc is a quoting operator like q or qq. It works like q in that it doesn't interpolate $foo or @foo, but like qq in that it recognizes backslash escapes such as \n, \xff, \N{EURO SIGN}, etc.

What it adds is the ability to embed arbitrary expressions in braces ({...}). This is both more readable and more efficient than the old "foo @{[bar]}" trick. All embedded code runs in scalar context.

If you need a literal { in a qc string, you can escape it with a backslash (\{) or interpolate code that yields a left brace ({'{'}).

qc_to

For longer strings you can use qc_to, which provides a heredoc-like syntax. The main difference between qc and qc_to is that qc_to uses the Ruby-like #{ ... } to interpolate code (not { ... }). This is because { } are more common in longer texts and escaping them gets annoying.

qc_to has two syntactic forms:

 qc_to <<'FOO'
 ...
 FOO

and

 qc_to <<"FOO"
 ...
 FOO

After qc_to there must always be a << (this is to give syntax highlighters a chance to get things right). After that, there are two possibilities:

• An identifier in single quotes. Backslash isn't treated specially in the string. To embed a literal #{, you need to write #{'#{'}.

• An identifier in double quotes. Backslash escapes are recognized. You can escape #{ by writing either \#{ or #\{.

Variables aren't interpolated in either case.

qcw

qcw is analogous to qw. It quotes a list of strings with code interpolation ({ ... }) like qc.

Differences between qcw and qw:

• { ... } sequences are interpreted as expressions to be interpolated in the current word. The result of { ... } is not scanned for spaces or split.

• Backslash escape sequences such as \n, \xff, \cA etc. are recognized.

• Spaces can be escaped with a backslash to prevent word splitting: qcw(a b\ c d) is equivalent to ('a', 'b c', 'd').

Backslash escape sequences

qc, qcw, and qc_to <<"..." support the following backslash escape sequences:

 \\         backslash
 \a         alarm/bell       (BEL)
 \b         backspace        (BS)
 \e         escape           (ESC)
 \f         form feed        (FF)
 \n         newline          (LF)
 \r         carriage return  (CR)
 \t         tab              (HT)

 \cX        control-X
            X can be any character from the set
              ?, @, a-z, A-Z, [, \, ], ^, _

 \o{FOO}    the character whose octal code is FOO
 \FOO       the character whose octal code is FOO
            (where FOO is at most 3 octal digits long)

 \x{FOO}    the character whose hexadecimal code is FOO
 \xFOO      the character whose hexadecimal code is FOO
            (where FOO is at most 2 hexadecimal digits long)
 \x         a NUL byte (if \x is not followed by '{' or a hex digit)
            (don't use this, it might go away in a future release)

 \N{U+FOO}  the character whose hexadecimal code is FOO
 \N{FOO}    the character whose Unicode name is FOO
            (as determined by the charnames pragma)

Any other backslashed character (including delimiters) is taken literally. In particular this means e.g. both qc!a\!b! and qc(a\!b) represent the three-character string "a!b".

The following are explicitly not supported: \Q, \L, \l, \U, \u, \F, \E.

Starting with perl v5.16, if you specify a named Unicode character with \N{...} and charnames hasn't been loaded yet, it is automatically loaded as if by use charnames ':full', ':short';.

AUTHOR

Lukas Mai, <l.mai at web.de>

COPYRIGHT & LICENSE

Copyright 2012-2013 Lukas Mai.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of either: the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; or the Artistic License.

See http://dev.perl.org/licenses/ for more information.