How to Modify Only Non-Quoted Words?

ventolin has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: How to Modify Only Non-Quoted Words? by ikegami (Patriarch) on Aug 30, 2004 at 20:10 UTC
`$_ = q{ xxx "xxxxx xxx xxxx" 'xxxx xx xx' xxxx xxxx "xxxxx " "xxx" xxx }; s/ \G ( # $1 (?: (?:"(?:[^"\\]\|\\.)") # Skip double-quoted phrases. \| (?:'(?:[^'\\]\|\\.)') # Skip single-quoted phrases. \| \s # Skip whitespace. )* ) ( # $2 [^\s"']+ # Something to prefix. ) /$1A$2/gsx; print; __END__ output: ====== Axxx "xxxxx xxx xxxx" 'xxxx xx xx' Axxxx Axxxx "xxxxx " "xxx" Axxx` [download]	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: How to Modify Only Non-Quoted Words? by ventolin (Novice) on Aug 30, 2004 at 20:47 UTC
Works great! Thanks!	[reply]
Re: How to Modify Only Non-Quoted Words? by ccn (Vicar) on Aug 30, 2004 at 20:36 UTC
`s { ([^"'])? # non quoted part ("[^"]")? # doublequoted ('[^']*')? # singlequoted } { my($x, $y, $z) = map {defined() ? $_ : ''} $1, $2, $3; $x =~ s/(?<!\S)(?=\S)/A/g; $x . $y . $z }xge;` [download]	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: How to Modify Only Non-Quoted Words? by Your Mother (Archbishop) on Aug 31, 2004 at 04:06 UTC
Don't know if it's relevant to the problem but both your and ikegami's solutions fail when contractions enter into the "word" list.	[reply]
Re^3: How to Modify Only Non-Quoted Words? by ikegami (Patriarch) on Aug 31, 2004 at 05:49 UTC
If you want to escape quotes oustide of quoted strings, change `( # $2 [^\s"']+ # Something to prefix. )` [download] to `( # $2 (?:[^\s"'\\]\|\\.)+ # Something to prefix. )` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: How to Modify Only Non-Quoted Words? by Your Mother (Archbishop) on Aug 31, 2004 at 06:44 UTC
Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed reading both solutions. They break down on a string like: She said, 'I've known you can't since yesterday.' Not that it is necessarily relevant to OP's real problem.	[reply]