Re^3: regex incorrectly matching newline

[ikegami]

No problem. Of course, you could simplify your entire code down to:

$buf = "hello\nworld";
$buf =~ s/[^ -~]/./g;
$rhs .= $buf;

The above alters the value of $buf in the process. Feel tree to make a copy of $buf and work with the copy if you want to preserve $buf's value.