Because Perl is rather context-sensitive and uses <I> to mean that in other contexts? In the code: 
while (<I>) {
  s/<I>/<italic>/g;
}

[download]
the first <I> reads from a filehandle and the second is literal text to replace. Fun, isn't it? :)

In reply to Re^2: Counting the number of replaces by dsheroh
in thread Counting the number of replaces by rsriram

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