Japhy can probably tell you how to do it in one go, with much looking about, but I'll have to settle for three lines: first remove and store comments, then strip the backslashes, then restore the comments. This seems to work:

my $test = q|\AFZ\BJK \*\AFZ...*\ |;
my @comments;
$test =~ s/(\\\*.*?\*\\)/ push @comments, $1; '%%comment%%' /eg;
$test =~ s/\\//g;
$test =~ s/%%comment%%/ shift @comments /eg;
print $test;

[download]

Any old marker will do as long as it doesn't appear in your text: something long and random would probably be best. %%comment%% was just the first thing that came into my head.

ps. goes clunk, i know, but easy to follow

In reply to Re: Replace character not inside comments by thpfft
in thread Replace character not inside comments by Anonymous Monk

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