use strict;
my $str = 'select * from where item1=abcd and price>=20 and item1 = abc and title=\'strings=evil\'\'bugs\' and id=-197';
my $regex = qr/(>=|<=|'[^']*(?:''[^']*)*')|=/p;
my $subst = '$1';
my $result = $str =~ s/$regex/$subst/rg;
print "The result of the substitution is' $result\n";
Please keep in mind that these code samples are automatically generated and are not guaranteed to work. If you find any syntax errors, feel free to submit a bug report. For a full regex reference for Perl, please visit: http://perldoc.perl.org/perlre.html