s/$1//g if ($line =~ m/.*(\[.*\])\s.*/);
   s/$1/ /g if ($line =~ m/^\w.*(\s\s).*/);        

##</code><code>##

   $line =~ s/\[[^]]+\]//g;
   $line =~ s/\s+(?=\S)/ /g;

##</code><code>##

   $line =~ s/ \[ .*? \] //gx;  # remove strings enclosed by "[..]"
   $line =~ s/ \s+ (\S) / $1/gx;  # normalize line-internal whitespace