I think that with those new elements Hofmator is right,
regexes aren't probably the good solution.

Especially with other simple answers available like :
print join'/',grep{if(!$u{$_}){$u{$_}=1}}split'/',$data;

Note to hofmator: don't hit me too hard...
My (poor) regex was not meant to be a solution but rather to show a possible way to study
(wasn't approach bold enough ? ;-)
Anyway I++ your post beccause your rightly outline some of the problems that may arise with the regex approach...
and in particular in my poor regex approach


"Only Bad Coders Code Badly In Perl" (OBC2BIP)

In reply to Re: Re: Re: Removing duplicate substrings from a string - is a regex possible? by arhuman
in thread Removing duplicate substrings from a string - is a regex possible? by iakobski

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.