G'day JDoolin,

Welcome to the monastery.

Given your two examples in subsequent posts in this thread, this does what you want:

#!/usr/bin/env perl -l

use strict;
use warnings;

my @test_strings = (
    'a { b } c ( d ) e',
    'a { b } c ( d ) e {{F}} ((G))'
);

my %replacement_for = (
    '{'   => ' lbracket ',
    ' { ' => ' lbracket ',
    '}'   => ' rbracket ',
    ' } ' => ' rbracket ',
);

for (@test_strings) {
    print "Initial string:  '$_'";
    replace();
    print "Replaced string: '$_'";
}

sub replace {
    s/( { | } |{(?!{)|(?<!})})/$replacement_for{$1}/g;
}
[download]

Output:

Initial string:  'a { b } c ( d ) e'
Replaced string: 'a lbracket b rbracket c ( d ) e'
Initial string:  'a { b } c ( d ) e {{F}} ((G))'
Replaced string: 'a lbracket b rbracket c ( d ) e { lbracket F rbracke
+t } ((G))'
[download]

Two things to note:

• You wrote "leftbracket" and "rightbracket" in one place, then "lbracket" and "rbracket" in another. Adjust the text in the code to suit.
• Multiple spaces in HTML paragraph text (<p>...</p>) are squeezed into a single space. If you show your data within <code>...</code> tags, we'll be able to see exactly what you want. Again, adjust the text in the code to suit.