hi monks.

i'm trying to write a regular expression that will replace all single quotes (') not contained in <%...%> tags with a separate string. i've been trying for some time now and feel like a moron for not being able to get it. here's what i've come up with:

s/(%>.*)'(.*<%)/${1}test$2/g;

it even seems to work in test cases. but when i apply it to this file: 

"Avert thine eyes, lest ye be stricken with coolness." (from the origi
+nal batkins web site, dated April 8, 2002
)<br><br>
<a href="http://batkins.com/forum/YaBB.pl">Enter the batkins forum</a>
+ - it's the place to be.
<br><br>
batkins.com is best viewed from the Hubble Telescope.
<br><br>
<hr>
<font size="+1"><b><u>the batkins weblog - it's nature's candy</u></b>
+</font>
<br><br>
<%
    # news
    my @news = split(/%%/, slurp("$DAT/news"));
    my $bit;
    my $i;
    for($i = 0; $i < 10; $i++)
    {
        $bit = "<b>$news[$i]</b><br>" . $news[$i + 1] . "<p>";
        print $bit;
        $i++;
    }

%>
<a href="/main/news.pl">View the rest of the weblog (<% print scalar(@
+news) - $i; %> more entries)</a>
<p>
<font face="-2"><a href="/main/all.pl">the batkins directory</a></font
+>

[download]
it doesn't do anything. any idea why?

thanks for your help and let me know if you need any more info.

In reply to silly regex question by batkins

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
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