in reply to regex: finding something that doesn't contain a quotation?

Your question is somewhat not very clear, but if i understood correctly, this works fine.

use strict; use warnings; use Regexp::Common qw/balanced/; #my $string = 'blah.boo(getSomething())'; my $string = 'blah.boo("getSomething")'; my ($match) = $string =~ /blah.boo($RE{balanced}{-parens=>'()'})[^;]*; +/; print $string, "\n" if ($match !~ /"/);

Prasad