c:\@Work\Perl\monks>perl -wMstrict -le "my @data = ( q{ServerName}, q{10.10.10.11}, q{Windows Server 2012}, ); ;; for my $datum (@data) { $datum =~ s{ \A .*? (?<= >) ([^<]*) .* }{$1}xms; print qq{'$datum'}; } " 'ServerName' '10.10.10.11' 'Windows Server 2012'