I wasn't aware you could use different characters during a substitution, thanks for that bit of info. You're right, that would make life a lot easier to read using # instead of slashes in situations like this. Your first solution is easy to read, I'll have to admit when using curlies confuses me.

This problem was bugging me for a few weeks now so I was throwing in anything I thought the problem could be (escaping every non-letter character). Also, I make a habit of escaping pretty much everything because I don't quite understand when things need to be escaped and when they're ok.

Thanks for the suggestion, that's really going to clean up my code :)

"Age is nothing more than an inaccurate number bestowed upon us at birth as just another means for others to judge and classify us"

sulfericacid