Tip #9 from the Basic debugging checklist : YAPE::Regex::Explain
The regular expression:
(?-imsx:(ther*))
matches as follows:
NODE EXPLANATION
----------------------------------------------------------------------
(?-imsx: group, but do not capture (case-sensitive)
(with ^ and $ matching normally) (with . not
matching \n) (matching whitespace and #
normally):
----------------------------------------------------------------------
( group and capture to \1:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
the 'the'
----------------------------------------------------------------------
r* 'r' (0 or more times (matching the most
amount possible))
----------------------------------------------------------------------
) end of \1
----------------------------------------------------------------------
) end of grouping
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Use . instead. Also, with different delimiters, you can clean up the replacement string:
use warnings;
use strict;
my $test = "Here is the there";
$test =~ s{(ther.)}{<test>$1</test>}ig;
print "$test\n";
__END__
Here is the <test>there</test>
