- # pre-scan the lexicon hashes to return _AUTO keys verbatim,
- # to keep locstrings containing '[' and '~' from tripping over Maketext
- return $_[0] unless grep exists $_->{$_[0]}, @{ $handle->_lex_refs };
+ # If we have no [_1] replacements, and the key does not appear
+ # in the lexicon, unescape (using ~) and return it verbatim, as
+ # an optimization.
+ my $unescaped = $_[0];
+ $unescaped =~ s!~(.)!$1!g;
+ return $unescaped unless grep exists $_->{$_[0]}, @{ $handle->_lex_refs };