I'm not interested in regexps as I'm not working with strings. This is being used to update database fields, so unless you're doing some really fancy tie-ing, regexps aren't gonna fly :)

For reference, the heart of the code that uses this snippet looks like this:

my $db = DBI->connect( $DSN, 'user', 'sekret', {AutoCommit => 0})
    or die "Couldn't connect to database $DSN: ${\DBI->errstr}\n";
END { $db and $db->disconnect }

my $ss = $db->prepare( q{update t set department = ? where department 
+= ?});
die unless $ss;

my $ok = 1;
REPLACE: for my $r( @order ) {
    for my $key( keys %$r ) {
        print "$key -> $r->{$key}\n";
        if( !$ss->execute( $r->{$key}, $key )) {
            warn "cannot update $key to $r->{$key}\n${\$ss->errstr}\n"
+;
            $ok = 0;
            last REPLACE;
        }
    }
}

$ok ? $db->commit : $db->rollback;
[download]

NB: The above code is condensed from production code. I have excised things that have no relevance to the example, so it just may or may not compile :)