use strict;
my $str = 'Hello my friend.There should be a space after sentence periods and commas, but that should not apply to 40.381,32 numbers.';
my $regex = qr/(?<!\d)([.,!?])(?![.,!?\d])|\s{2,}/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