I used the m{} syntax and fixed the regexp issues. I'm actually posting on a different computer from the code so the regexp issues were mistyping it.

I'll study the different not equals soon. I didn't realize the the ne was the wrong syntax. I actually had (!~) initially but I read on a webpage that it's better to use "ne".

At first I wasn't sure why I would need flag to determine if I'm in a multi-line /*...*/ comment. The syntax used in the files, always has a * as the first visible character in multi-line comments. Although you're right that it's not required. That's a nice catch. I haven't programmed in C in years.

The only reason for accumulating the text is that the write commands are all together instead of spread out. The actual logic of the write operations take up a page of text and it's nice to treat the write operation as a single block. Since the files are small, avg. is 7k, and the largest are no more than 100k, memory is not a problem. Is this considered bad form in perl?

I actually had (!~) initially but I read on a webpage that it's better to use "ne".

When comparing against a constant strings, it's more efficient to avoid regexps.

$var eq 'abc'
$var ne 'abc'
$var1 eq $var2
$var1 ne $var2
[download]

are faster and simpler than

$var =~ /^abc\z/
$var !~ /^abc\z/
$var1 =~ /^\Q$var2\z/
$var1 !~ /^\Q$var2\z/
[download]

I'll study the different not equals soon.

$var ne /regexp/
means
$var ne ($_ =~ /regexp/)

• When matching against a regexp, use a match operator (=~ or !~).
• When comparing strings, use a string comparison operator (eq, ne, lt, gt, le, ge or cmp).
• When comparing numbers, use a numerical comparison operator (==, !=, <, >, <=, >= or <=>).