use strict;
my $str = '\'*** This day is the day of all days
\'*** This day is the day of all days
Dim day as integer \'so far so good today but maybe not another day
day=day+1 \'a daystar is a planet visible in the east before sunrise
Regex is not perfect
text1.Text = "\'day" \' we don\'t want to change that one
';
my $regex = qr/(?<='.*)\bday(?=s\b|\b)/mp;
my $subst = 'night';
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