Current Perl documentation can be found at perldoc.perl.org.

Here is our local, out-dated (pre-5.6) version:

It depends on what you mean by ``preserving case''. The following script makes the substitution have the same case, letter by letter, as the original. If the substitution has more characters than the string being substituted, the case of the last character is used for the rest of the substitution.

    # Original by Nathan Torkington, massaged by Jeffrey Friedl
    #
    sub preserve_case($$)
    {
        my ($old, $new) = @_;
        my ($state) = 0; # 0 = no change; 1 = lc; 2 = uc
        my ($i, $oldlen, $newlen, $c) = (0, length($old), length($new));
        my ($len) = $oldlen < $newlen ? $oldlen : $newlen;

        for ($i = 0; $i < $len; $i++) {
            if ($c = substr($old, $i, 1), $c =~ /[\W\d_]/) {
                $state = 0;
            } elsif (lc $c eq $c) {
                substr($new, $i, 1) = lc(substr($new, $i, 1));
                $state = 1;
            } else {
                substr($new, $i, 1) = uc(substr($new, $i, 1));
                $state = 2;
            }
        }
        # finish up with any remaining new (for when new is longer than old)
        if ($newlen > $oldlen) {
            if ($state == 1) {
                substr($new, $oldlen) = lc(substr($new, $oldlen));
            } elsif ($state == 2) {
                substr($new, $oldlen) = uc(substr($new, $oldlen));
            }
        }
        return $new;
    }

    $a = "this is a TEsT case";
    $a =~ s/(test)/preserve_case($1, "success")/gie;
    print "$a\n";

This prints:

    this is a SUcCESS case