#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use Text::Balanced ('extract_tagged');

my $text = "this is a test <b>for</b> tags! \n";

my ($leading,$extracted, $remainder);
$leading = substr $text, 0, index($text,'<'), '';
($extracted, $remainder) = extract_tagged($text);

printf "leading: %s$/", $leading;
printf "extracted: %s$/", $extracted;
printf "remainder: %s$/", $remainder;

exit 0;

##</code><code>##

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use Text::Balanced ('extract_tagged');

my $text = "this is a test <B>for</B> tags! \n";
pos($text) = index $text, '<';

my $extracted = extract_tagged($text);

printf "extracted: %s$/", $extracted;
printf "remainder: %s$/", $text;
exit 0;