I want to change this data: 
<p>
blah blah
<blockquote>
blah
</blockquote>
blah
<p>

[download]
into this: 
<p>
<b>blah blah</b>
<blockquote>
<b>blah</b>
</blockquote>
<b>blah</b>
<p>

[download]
I tried: 
s/(<.*?>)(.*?)(<.*?>)/$1<b>$2</b>$3/g;

[download]
But that didn't touch the code inside of <blockquote> because the marker had already gone past that tag on the first match.

I switched to lookahead/lookback: 

s/(?=(<.*?>)(.*?)(<.*?>))/$1<b>$2</b>$3/g;

[download]
But that created extra code; a nested blockquote for example.

(This is all a simplified case of what I'm actually trying to do.) In summary: How do I do search/replace if a pattern matches both the end of one and the beginning of another string to replace? Alternative solutions: What is the best way to either tell the "replace" part to only print out chunks of code it hasn't printed before, OR, how can I add additional search criteria to the "search" part without it becoming part of the replacement? Like, "search for this whole string, but only replace this portion of that string with this other replacement string".

Thanks, tunesmith

In reply to Regex: How do I use lookahead with search/replace? by tunesmith

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