Alright I don't need the asterix but I do need the '.
I still don't get why I should escape ' since it's not supposed to be a funny char, is it ?
And by the way, I didn't fully understood broquaint's explanation (I'm french and I might not understand something properly...)
All right I looked again at perlre and I'm sorry I forgot - was used to define a range. Now I understand why I have to backslash it.
It's a wonder anything worked at all beforehand :-)