my $str = "yada yada <name> string-to-capture   string-to-capture2 </name> foo bar baz";
if ( $str =~ m!<name>(.*?)<\/name>! )
   {
      my $var1=$1;
      $var1 = join(" ", split " ", $var1 );  # remove leading, trailing and 
                                             # collapse internal whitespace
      print "$var1\n";
   }