dchetlin said:
Do we want the value, or do we want the literal string?
and
There's a discrepancy between the original post and those two posts wrt what behavior is wanted.

Well, you ask excellent questions! I should have stated more clearly what I wanted. I wanted to replace this (literally)

<% $flat->purge('dynamix','outburst') %>
[download]

with this (literally)

$CONFIG{DYNAMIX_OUTBURST}
[download]

Sorry for the confusion. I didn't escape $CONFIG{DYNAMIX_OUTBURST} in the regex because I didn't know that it would be interpolated when using single quotes for the string that Perl will execute. I am curious as to the function of each individual backwhack.