you probably need to explain this case in a little more detail, but i see no reason why this example is too complicated to solve with a simple regex.

i would break this problem up into two parts where the first portion consists of working with only the files with one dot:

then you can focus on modifying the files that qualify. if i understand your example correctly (and i probably don't) here's how i would remove the first div only if the second div contains an img tag with its src set to indent.gif

$html =~ m|<div class="sectionHeading">.+?</div>\s+<div class="section
+Content">.+?<img .+? src="./../../images/indent.gif">.+?</div>|s and 
+do {
    $html =~ s|<div class="sectionHeading">.+?</div>\s+||;
};
[download]

actually, this can probably be done using a look ahead but then the example gets a little more complicated.