You might need to wait until Perl 6 for this functionality.

This fortnight on Perl 6, week ending 2003-11-23
I have the feeling that what's actually going to happen is that we'll end up with a supplementary, non destructive form of s/// which doesn't alter the original string, but returns a new string with the substitutions made.

In reply to Re: Non-destructive string substitution by EdwardG
in thread Non-destructive string substitution by Sprad

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