>perl -wMstrict -le "my $s = 'Mariel Miller,' . 'Allyson Fiona Hadwin,' . ' Jenna Cambria ' ; print qq{[[$s]]}; ;; my $tag = qr{ P_contrib-author }xms; my $open_tag = qr{ < $tag > }xms; my $close_tag = qr{ < / $tag > }xms; ;; while ($s =~ m{ $open_tag \s* (.*?) \s* $close_tag }xmsg) { print qq{name: '$1'}; } " [[Mariel Miller,Allyson Fiona Hadwin, Jenna Cambria ]] name: 'Mariel Miller' name: 'Allyson Fiona Hadwin' name: 'Jenna Cambria'