you're opening a can of worms here . . . legacy code is the short answer!

user input is saved from a multi-line textbox to a db. To display the text, carrige returns are handled by this:
$value =~ s/\n/<br>/g;
recently code has been added to allow hyperlinks to be inputed by users, using custom tags handled by another reg expresion. If a typed link is longer than the multi-line textbox width, it will wrap and thanks to the above reg expresion will contain a <b> which breaks the link.
now you know . . .

In reply to Re^2: Regular Expression Elegance by monkie
in thread Regular Expression Elegance by monkie

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