Question on regex substitution using variables...

Hi,

Hopefully a simple question but my brain is hurting...

I want to make a regex substitution, using search and replace
patterns contained in variables. What I want to do is:

$f = "fred.abc";
$f =~ s/(.*)\.abc/$1.def/;
print "$f\n";

but where the two parts of the substitution are variables:

my $to_pattern = "(.*)\\.abc";
my $from_pattern = "\$1.def";
$f =~ s/$to_pattern/$from_pattern/;
print "$f\n";

Unfortunately this doesn't seem to work, where the first example
correctly prints out "fred.def" the second one doesn't seem to
do the back-substitution, and just prints "$1.def".

Is this possible, and if so, what quoting magic do I need to make
it work???

TIA,
Ian.



#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;

my $f;

$f = "fred.abc";
$f =~ s/(.*)\.abc/$1.def/;

print "$f\n"; # prints "fred.def" (correct)


$f = "joe.abc";

my $to_pattern = "(.*)\\.abc";
my $from_pattern = "\$1.def";

$f =~ s/$to_pattern/$from_pattern/;

print "$f\n"; # prints "$1.def"

# end


--
Ian

"Tamahome!!!" - "Miaka!!!"
.