On exercise 8.2 from Learning Perl 3rd there is this regex:   /"([^"]*)"/ This is supposed to match a simple double-quoted string like "hello", but not "hello"you" (nor "hello\"you"). The only problem is that it is matching the latters. I tried it like this:   /"([^a]*)"/ and well enough, it wouldn't match any word that contained an a in it (ie: "wilma"), so what am I'm missing? PS: I should add that one-liner does work:   perl -wle '$a = "hello\"you";if ($a =~ /"([^"]*)"/){ print "yes"}else{print "no"}' Just not on the script which adds to the weirdness of it...

Edit by dws for code tags and clearer title

In reply to Problem with regex from Learning Perl (3rd edition) by slocate

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