Please help me understand this expression

[Jeremy]

I'm no Perl junkie, but I need to understand what this expression means.

s/\\'\''/'\'\''/g;


I know it is searching for something and replacing it with something else, but I can't seem to figure out what it means. Can someone help me?

Thanks,
Jeremy

 

[Dr.Ruud]

I need to understand what this expression means.

s/\\'\''/'\'\''/g;

Let's simplify it first:

s{\\'''}{''''}g;

So any slash that is followed by 3 quotes, will be replaced by 4 quotes.
(It was probably formatted the way it is, to silence some editor.)


But I am assuming that the substitution comes out of a Perl source file.
If the shell is involved, then other rules apply first.
Somewhere in bash, it could for example mean s{\\'}{}g.