in reply to regex hell

Show more of your code? Where is $change ever set true? What is $false?

Also, try:

$plat = "asdfb\tssf"; use Data::Dumper; $Data::Dumper::Useqq=1; $Data::Dumper::Terse=1; print "Platform: ", Dumper($plat), "\n";
to see what's in $plat in a more definitive way.