I have this routine that takes all the spaces in between a string of adjacent html tags. Only problem is it also takes the spaces out of the tags themselves. I cannot understand why this is happening.

eg: <span class="c"> becomes <spanclass="c"> 

        $newtoken = "";
        while ("$token" ne "$newtoken") {
            $newtoken = "$token";
            $token =~ s@((?:<[^>]*>)*) +((?:<[^>]*>)*)@\1\2@g;
        }

[download]

If I put a "dot" metacharacter as below, it fixes it, but I don't understand why. If I am back-referencing the whole tag, why would anything inside the back-reference be affected? 

        $newtoken = "";
        while ("$token" ne "$newtoken") {
            $newtoken = "$token";
            $token =~ s@((?:<[^>]*>).*) +((?:<[^>]*>).*)@\1\2@g;
        }

[download]

In reply to spaces removed in backreference by Allasso

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.