Regular Expression to Replace & with &

Question

I have a string which have & like the one below.

"This R&M & Exapmle  . It is very big & Complicated &146; example."

I wants to replace & with & but when I use $str =~ s/&/&/ig; which give the following output.

"This R&M & Company  . It is very big & CMM Level3 &146; Organization."

And I am expecting this one.

"This R&M & Company  . It is very big & CMM Level3 &146; Organization."

Please help me I don't have any idea how to fix it.

Answer 1

You can use a negative look-ahead assertion:

$str =~ s/&(?!\w+;)/&/g;