Parser, smarser. Just use a simple regex. As a start: 

    s{
      (                         # $1 for whole match
         ' (?: \\. | [^']+ )* ' # 'string'
       | " (?: \\. | [^"]+ )* " # "string"
       | (?:^|\r*\n)[^\S\n]*    # leading spaces
       | ([^\S\n]+)             # $2 is trivial spaces
      )
    }{
        $2 ? ' ' : $1
    }gsex

[download]

- tye        

In reply to Re^2: Cleaning Whitespace from Source Code (re) by tye
in thread Cleaning Whitespace from Source Code by hackdaddy

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