#!/usr/bin/perl
use 5.014;
# 988698

my $str = "yada yada <name> string-to-capture </name> foo bar baz";
if ( $str =~ m!<name>(.*?)<\/name>! )
   {
      my $var1=$1;
      $var1 =~ s/ //g;  # removing spaces?
      print "$var1\n";
   }