note ww <p>Alternate:</p> <c>C:\>perl -E "my $str='<c:t="AD2343"/><c:p>65677676</c:p>'; if ( $str =~ m|(<c:.*)?(?:[/>]{2})| ) {say $1;}" <c:t=AD2343</c> <p>Your code asks the regex engine to match a 'c', a colon and <b>any number of anything thereafter</b>(except newlines).</p> <p>Because you didn't provide the actual code, we can't be sure just what other issues may be in play... such as the previously mentioned use of an alternate regex marker.</p> <p><b>Update (based on the redefined problem in [id://988425]): </b> You'll probably have fewer problems in the long run if you use an html parser of one flavor or another, rather than trying to parse html with regexen.</p> 988422 988422