use strict;
my $str = 'peter@pan.com, lucky <jack@pot.com>, "William Tell" <billy@tell.com>, "John Rambo, III" <johnny@rambo.com>, "there, might, be, several, commas inside the quotes" <multiple@commas.com>,
"yes, this is also a valid email address, can you believe" <yes@this@is@valid.com>
';
my $regex = qr/(".*)(,)(\s.*")/ip;
my $subst = '$1<!>$3';
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