to get everything in between...

/>(.*?)<\/a>/;
print $1;
[download]

the first one doesn't get everything as you expect because the [^\z] matches one non-EOL char so...

1. .* gobbles everything to EOL
2. the regex backtracks to match the > (last char on line)
3. regex attempts to match a non-EOL char - FAIL - no chars left in string
4. regex backtracks to match the previous >
5. regex matches a non-EOL char "j" - COMPLETE

the second one just _looks_ for a non-EOL after the match but is zero-width so works as you expect.

hope this helps

   larryk                                          
perl -le "s,,reverse killer,e,y,rifle,lycra,,print"