You'll need to distinguish the \1 from the following 2. A few ideas come to mind:

• Use [2] instead of 2 (a simple character class)
• Use (?:2) instead of 2 (a non-capturing paren)
• Use (?:\1) instead of \1
• Use /x mode, and insert a space
• Insert an empty non-capturing paren between the two: (?:) {grin}

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker

---

update: And these are all great solutions if we're talking about the regex part of the substitution, but the original questioner was asking about the replacement part. Gah.

In that case, just use ${1} instead. Shouldn't have been using \1 in the first place. {grin}

---

---

Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!

Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.

Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.

Please read these before you post! —

• How do I compose an effective node title?
• How do I post a question effectively?
• Markup in the Monastery

Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:

a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr

You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)

	For:		Use:
	&		&
	<		&lt;
	>		&gt;
	[		&#91;
	]		&#93;

Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?

See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.