i'm trying to write a regular expression that will replace all single quotes (') not contained in <%...%> tags with a separate string.

The recipe I've used for years now: match the skip sequence, or the string you want to match, in that order. If you found a skip sequence, replace the matched string by itself, otherwise, replace by whatever you want.

A conversion to simple code: 

<s/(<%.*?%>)|(')/$1 || 'test'/seg;

[download]
I didn't have to put parens around the second pattern in this simple case, but it's the way to capture the matched text in case you want to match more than a single literal string, and you want to know what you matched: it'll be in $2.

In reply to Re: silly regex question by bart
in thread silly regex question by batkins

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.