hey, i have been using the expression (?<!\\)\$[a-zA-Z0-9_]+ to match all variable names in a perl script, except those whose name is escaped ("\$blah"), and it works fine, but i wanted to turn it into a substition (the script is supposed to change variable names in a perl script) and have each instance of a variable replaced with the output of a subroutine which accepts the matched text as it's argument and mixes the characters around...however, i tried s/(?<!\\)\$[a-zA-Z0-9_]+/change_name($&)/ge and it didnt seem work. (i understand '$&' holds the last matching text..and after reading some example code, i also tried '$1'...to no avail)..the code segment is 
while (<FILENAME>) {
s/(?<!\\)\$[a-zA-Z0-9_]+/change_name($&)/ge;
}

[download]
and change_name()'s return value is the altered text. thanks in advance, moe

In reply to substition problem by cghost23

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.