using wildcards in this perl command

Hi there,

is it possible to use wild cards in this statement

ssh $remote_server 'perl -pi -e "s,EXP_SERIAL_19b8be67=\"\",EXP_SERIAL_`hostid`=\"UNKNOWN\"," /var/myfile'

This command works fine but the bit in bold (the 8 character hostid) will not always be 19b8be67 so I was hoping I could use some sort of wildcard that indicates the 8 characters directly after EXP_SERIAL_

ie something like

ssh $remote_server 'perl -pi -e "s,EXP_SERIAL_$$$$$$$$=\"\",EXP_SERIAL_`hostid`=\"UNKNOWN\"," /var/myfile'

Does anybody know how I could achieve this?

Cheers

ok so I found out that "?" matches to an individual character so i tried

ssh $remote_server 'perl -pi -e "s,EXP_SERIAL_????????=\"\",EXP_SERIAL_`hostid`=\"UNKNOWN\"," /var/myfile'

and I got the error

/EXP_SERIAL_????????/: nested *?+ in regexp at -e line 1.

maybe I cant use/nest a regex in here afterall:(

ok so ive answered my own question

instead of

????????

is used

.*= 

where = is the next character after the 8 hostid numbers