Here is one solution:

my @term= ("My Cat", "your CAt", "thiS CAT", "THAt caT", "their cAT", 
+"dead cAt", "cAtostrophic cat");

my $search='cat'; 

for ( @term )
{
  s!\b($search)\b!<a href=x>$1</a>!i;
  print $_,$/;
}

[download]

This finds all "cat"s (the i at the end of the regular expression makes it case insensitive.), captures them and puts them into $1, and then prints them so you can see what has changed. The \b on both sides insures that there is a word boundary on both sides of cat so things like catostrophic are not changed. Note that this will only capture one cat per line you need to add a g at the end of the regular expression if you want to catch more.

-enlil

In reply to Re: substitution preserving capitilization by Enlil
in thread substitution preserving capitilization by Anonymous Monk

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • 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! —
  • 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:
    & &amp;
    < &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.