>> Since a quote is not special regexp character, it doesn't need escaping.

agreed!!

>> Or is the given quote a different quote than you are matching against? (Someone gives you a "smart" quote for instance ... )

yeah! hate smart quotes! the data file has been 'cleaned' to ensure there are no such entities. The quote character used in the replace was cut-and-pasted and globally-replaced in the data file and my perl, so it is definitely, 100%, exactly the same!