You're looking at the wrong line. The error occurs in s/$delete_candidate//;. Perhaps you want s/\Q$delete_candidate//;?

Update:

Don't use foreach (<FILE>) (which loads the entire file into memory) when while (<DATA>) (which reads the file one line at a time) suffices.

Also, your code is needlessly complicated. In fact, the regular expession that was giving you problems is completely useless. (It's used to modify $_ which is promptly discarded.) Your code simplifies to the following: 

# If you need the stuff in @data_out

my @data_out;
while (<DATA>) {
   next if /^\*{4}200[^6]/;
   push @data_out, $_;
}

print @data_out;

[download]
or 
# If you don't need @data_out

while (<DATA>) {
   print unless /^\*{4}200[^6]/;
}

[download]
or 
# If you want something easy to read and
# don't mind loading the entire file into memory.

print grep { !/^\*{4}200[^6]/ } <DATA>;

[download]

In reply to Re: regex error puzzle by ikegami
in thread regex error puzzle by ww

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.