Actually, my comment here was about the "$$" in the replacement string being confusing (because it looks like you're replacing "$$" with "$$"--but the replacement "$$" is really just an escaped "$"), not the backslashes in the regexp. Like I mentioned before, I don't think you need the double-dollar in the replacement string since it won't be interpreted as a metacharacter there if it doesn't have anything after it. But this isn't a big deal.