Some advice to go along with what liz said. You don't need to 'escape' percent signs and you posted the wrong operator in your code that is broken. Here is that line of code, slightly 'fixed': 
$str =~ s/%q//g;

[download]
All you need to do here is add the zero-width negative look-behind assertion and you are go to go. Think of this as a 'helping you help yourself' solution. ;)

jeffa

L-LL-L--L-LL-L--L-LL-L--
-R--R-RR-R--R-RR-R--R-RR
B--B--B--B--B--B--B--B--
H---H---H---H---H---H---
(the triplet paradiddle with high-hat)

In reply to Re: regex match question by jeffa
in thread regex match question by Anonymous Monk

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