How do I build Perl regular expressions dynamically?

Question

I have a Perl script that traverses a directory hierarchy using File::Next::files. It will only return to the script files that end in \".avi\", \".flv\", \".mp3\", \".mp4\", a

Answer 1

If you want to build a potentially large regexp and don't want to bother debugging the parentheses, use a Perl module to build it for you!

use strict;
use Regexp::Assemble;

my $re = Regexp::Assemble->new->add(qw(avi flv mp3 mp4 wmv));

...

if ($file =~ /$re/) {
    # a match!
}

print "$re\n"; # (?:(?:fl|wm)v|mp[34]|avi)