How to reproduce: In a buffer, activate cperl-mode (M-x cperl-mode), then enter: $a++ / $b; This is supposed to be a division. However, cperl-mode interprets the slash as the start of a regular expression. Accordingly, the following text is displayed with the wrong face, and also cperl-mode might complain that it can't find the end of the regular expression. Emacs does not crash. Attached: A patch which fixes the issue for $a++ and $a--, and also includes a test to verify that the very similar text "$a+ / $b" is still correctly interpreted as a regular expression. Disclaimer: I'm rather new to elisp and even newer to ERT. Cheers, haj