What you want is a negative lookahead $iter =~ s/\b$varS(?!\.)/St./gi;
That says to find any occurrence of $varS that is preceeded by a word boundry (so you don't replace things like worst) and is NOT followed by a . Tanton -----Original Message----- From: Miretsky, Anya To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' Sent: 11/15/2001 10:37 AM Subject: Regulare Expressions/ Substitution Question I am trying to replace all occurences of the word St with St. without generating St.. in the incorrect substitutions of St. The code I have been playing with is something like: $item = "35 Main St." (it could also be "35 Main St" in which case I want the substitution to happen) $varS = "st"; $item =~ s/\b$varS(^.|\W)\b/St./gi; This doesn't work because Perl is expecting a character after the $varS string, but I don't know how to specify to substitute for the contents of $varS except when it ends with a period. Can anyone help? Thanks in advance. Anya Miretsky Computer Technology Dept. Brooklyn Botanic Garden 1000 Washington Avenue Brooklyn, NY 11225 (718)623-7265 [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
