Darin, something about your problem kept nagging me. Have you considered also keeping an *exceptions* dictionary? This would allow flexibility in adjusting for future problem words without modifying your code. It would also let you handle phrases, and uses two trivial regex's. Something similar to the following:

# exceptions dictionary
our @Exceptions = (
'game cocks',
'gamecocks', #etc
);

# censor dictionary
our @Vulgarities = (
'cocks',
'cock', #etc
);

$censored = censor($post);

sub censor{
    # get a copy of the post
    my $copy = shift;

    # remove all exceptions
    for $except (@exceptions){
        $copy =~ s/$except//gi;
    }

    # now check for banned words or phrases
    for $vulgar (@vulgarities){
        if ($copy =~ /$vulgar/i){
            return 1;
        }
    }
    return;
}

[download]

In reply to Re: Regex solution needed by hangon
in thread Regex solution needed by spivey3587

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.