A little bit of smoke and mirrors, then... 
$_ = 'TTTDDDTTTTTTX';

my @patterns = qw(TTT DDD TD TTTTTT);

my %tags;

for my $pat (@patterns) {
    my $pat2 = substr($pat,0,1).'(?='.substr($pat,1,length($pat)).')';
+ # T(?=TT) only REALLY matches the first char, but that still works
    while(/($pat2)/g) {
        print "$pat = $-[0] $+[0]\n";
        push @{$tags{$-[0]}}, "<SPAN CLASS=$pat>";
        push @{$tags{$-[0]+length($pat)}}, "</SPAN>"; # instead of usi
+ng $+[0] we use $-[0]+the length of the string matched, since it is a
+ fixed string, no problems.
    }
}

my $currentpos = 0;
print "$_\n";
for my $pos (sort { $a <=> $b } keys %tags) {
    print substr($_,0,($pos-$currentpos),'');
    print join('',@{$tags{$pos}});
    $currentpos = $pos;
}
print $_,"\n";

[download]

                - Ant
                - Some of my best work - (1 2 3)

In reply to Re^3: s/// only replacing most of the time... by suaveant
in thread s/// only replacing most of the time... by mdunnbass

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.