If you are doing this to insert the data in a database, I'd recommend making the problem go away by learning how to use placeholders. Look in Tutorials for guides on using DBI and placeholders.

Anyway, this regex should do what you want.

$artist =~ s/'/\\'/g;
[download]

You may also have to do substitutions for the escape character itself if it might ever appear in any of your strings.

Simply backwhacking your quotes is often not necessary, nor is it ever sufficient.

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker
Be sure to read my standard disclaimer if this is a reply.

(my $artist_qfix= $artist) =~ s['][\\']g;
print $artist_qfix;
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• Note : Gives us more of the problem if you wish, we may have better solution for you.

artist

    ($artist_qfix = $artist) =~ s/'+/\Q$&/g;
[download]

Abigail