Do a perl command from applescript

Question

I'd like to use Perl from AppleScript for text replacements. The snippet below works, however when the var haystackString starts to include apostrophes, this fails. I tried using AppleScript's "quoted form of" on haystackString however it fails I think because the shell command I'm using needs single quotes to enclose the commands being executed by Perl. Any tips? Thanks, Ted
set haystackString to "this this"
  set findString to "this"
  set replaceString to "that"
set shellscript to ("perl -e '$s=\"" & haystackString & "\";$toFind=\"" & findString & "\";$replaceWith =\"" & replaceString & "\";$s =~ s/$toFind/$replaceWith/g;print $s;'") as string
  set testString to do shell script shellscript

Answer 1

Hi,
Ted Fitzpatrick wrote:
however it fails I think because the shell command I'm using needs single quotes to enclose the commands being executed by Perl. Any tips? Thanks, Ted
Yes, that's right.
Solution, use the arguments:
set haystackString to "can't  can't"
set findString to "can't"
set replaceString to "that's all"
set args to (quoted form of haystackString) & " " & (quoted form of findString) & " " & quoted form of replaceString
set testString to do shell script "perl -e '$s=\"$ARGV[0]\";$s =~ s/$ARGV[1]/$ARGV[2]/g; print \"$s\"' " & args