Hello! I wrote a program in perl to footnote a file .... the program has a list of words that need to be footnoted and a file that the program searches through.

The problem is this..... The program is footnoting some of the words that it finds in the actual 'footnote' text.

Here is an example of the file:

$line = " Jack and jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. Jac
+k fell down and broke his crown and jill came tumbling after.";

$newline = $line;        ## MAKE A COPY OF THE LINE

@wordlist = (hill,pail,water,down);   # THE LIST OF WORDS TO SEARCH FO
+R

## FOR EACH WORD IN THE WORDLIST -- FOOTNOTE THE WORD
for ($i=0; $i < @wordlist; $i++)
{
    $currword = $wordlist[$i];
    $newline =~ s/(\b$currword(?:ed|ing|al)?\b)/\\footnote\{$1 $hash{l
+c($1)}{explanation}\}/im;
}

[download]

And  $hash{lc($1)}{explanation} successfully returns the explanation of the current word in @wordlist.

Suppose the definition of 'pail' is:

'A cylindrical vessel with a handle that holds water.'

After my program runs, both the 'water' in the poem and the 'water' in the footnote definition of 'pail' will be footnote (ie. There is a footnote within a footnote)

How do I get it to not footnote the 'water' in the 'pail' definition?

In reply to Need to modify my reg-expression by cranberry13

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