print $& if /^<a href.*>[^\z]/;
print $';
[download]

This does not work - as jroberts already pointed out - because the first letter after the closing angle bracket is eaten as well. So it's not printed with $POSTMATCH.

Furthermore the regex contained an additional closing parenthesis - this was already in the original post and just a copy and paste error. I fixed that above.

-- Hofmator