in reply to Regex::Common balanced does not seem to work

You should always use strict and warnings. You get the following error when using those: 
Variable "$RE" is not imported at 1063912.pl line 20.
Global symbol "$RE" requires explicit package name at 1063912.pl line 
+20.
Execution of 1063912.pl aborted due to compilation errors.

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The fix is to change ${RE} to $RE

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom