I am seeking the wisdom of the Monks.

I am trying to parse an HTML page for specific words and link them to their definition in a glossary.

That is easy enough to do using this simple bit of code: 

foreach my $word (keys %glossary)
{
    print STDERR "$word ";
    # Works but tries to link inside other links.
    $file =~ s/(\s+)($word)([\.\?\!]?\s+)/"$1<a href=\"".$glossary{$wo
+rd}{'link'}."\">$2<\/a>$3"/eig;
 }

[download]

($file contains the entire text of the page and I forgot a \s or two to deal with whitespace. Oops.)

The problem I'm having is that it is trying to link words that are already part of other links. I don't want that to happen. How can I replace just the words that are not enclosed in <a> tags?

I have an idea that involves replacing the links first with a place holder, then replacing the words in the doc, and finally putting the links back but that means going through the file two more times. I would prefer to do it all at once if I could.

I would be greatful for any enlightenment I could find.
PerlStalker

In reply to Linking words in html to glossary. by PerlStalker

Title:
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