replace &

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

#!/usr/bin/perl

while(<DATA>){
print $_;
}

__DATA__
Hi  & How r u
&quot; How r u &amp; dear &quot;
[download]

How to replace only single character & to & where the output should look like

Hi &amp; How r u
&quot; How r u &amp; dear &quot;
[download]

Comment on replace & Select or Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: replace & by moritz (Cardinal) on Aug 20, 2009 at 10:52 UTC
Use regular expressions, see perlretut. Perl 6 projects - links to (nearly) everything that is Perl 6.	[reply]
Re: replace & by Sue D. Nymme (Monk) on Aug 20, 2009 at 12:27 UTC
How would you want the following input to be handled? `I spoke with Bill&Ted; they're fine.`	[reply] [d/l]
Re: replace & by JavaFan (Canon) on Aug 20, 2009 at 10:59 UTC
Why bother? A lone '&' is perfectly valid HTML, and all major browsers display it correctly. '&' only needs escaping if it could be parsed as part of an entity when it shouldn't.	[reply]
Re^2: replace & by Melly (Chaplain) on Aug 20, 2009 at 11:06 UTC
"Why bother?" - presumably because that was the assignment ;) Anon Monk, can we see your efforts before we try and help? That said, it sounds like you need to match an ampersand that has a whitespace character before and after it... `map{$a=1-$_/10;map{$d=$a;$e=$b=$_/20-2;map{($d,$e)=(2$d$e+$a,$e2 -$d2+$b);$c=$d2+$e2>4?$d=8:_}1..50;print$c}0..59;print$/}0..20` [download] Tom Melly, pm (at) cursingmaggot (stop) co (stop) uk	[reply] [d/l]