I'm not playing dumb here - I know why its filtered.
snicker and s-n-i-g-g-e-r are synonyms. snicker is hardly ever used in english although widespread in US english, I always assumed s-n-i-g-g-e-r was also in use in US english (I may be wrong on this.) If you say snicker to a brit they think you are talking about a Mars bar with peanuts in.
I'd just like the pattern matching to ignore s-n-i-g-g-e-r, because its a great (and legitimate) word. maybe its the only example of a legitimate word which has a banned word as part of it? cant think of any other examples off the top of my head.
this is the difference in PERL:
s/nicker/lover/ /* as it is now
s/[^s]nicker/lover/ /* allows snicker through but catches nicker