Question

I need to capture string between quote chars (") to change quotes for fancy ones, thus i created substitution, my code:

my $pk = qq|IV Baltic Sea NGO Forum "Challenges for Baltic Sea civil society"|;
$pk =~ s/"(\p{Word}+.?+)"/«$1»/g;
say $pk;

I meant regex as that:

1. quoting char
2. followed by at least one word char
3. followed by any char
4. until next quoting char (non-greedy capture)

I don’t get captured when there is any non-word char between quotes. Why?

I found another solution too, but i’d like to understand, why my regex does not work?

Answer 1

.?+ is not reluctant quantifier. It is in fact a possessive ? quantifier.

You need to use .+? instead.

So, try this:

$pk =~ s/"(\p{Word}+.+?)"/«$1»/g;

or, you can even use [^"]+ instead of reluctant quantifier. It will automatically stop at the first " character:

$pk =~ s/"(\p{Word}+[^"]+)"/«$1»/g;