Will you please tell me what I am missing after I took all of the comments out? I'm still getting an infinite loop when these are nested with the error Use of uninitialized value in numeric gt (>) at files/lib/Base/HTML/Inline.pm line 32, <DATA> line 19.

package Base::HTML::Inline;
use strict;
use warnings;
use Exporter qw(import);
our @EXPORT_OK = qw(inline);

# Written by an Anonymous Monk on PerlMonks (http://www.perlmonks.org/
+?node_id=1028699)

use Test::More qw' no_plan ';
use Regexp::Common qw/ balanced /;
use Data::Dump qw/ dd pp /;

use vars qw/ $re_balanced_angles /;

sub TRACE; sub DEBUG;
*TRACE = *DEBUG = sub { print STDERR @_,"\n" };

our $re_balanced_angles = qr{\<(?:(?>[^\<\>]+)|(??{ $re_balanced_angle
+s }))*\>}x;
 
our $allowed = join '|', qw[
A ABBR ACRONYM B BIG
CITE CODE DFN EM I KBD Q SAMP SMALL
SPAN STRONG SUB SUP TT VAR
];

sub inline {
    local $_ = $_[0];
    my $dent = $_[1] || 0;
    pos = 0;
    my $ret = "";
inlineLOOP:
    while( length > pos ){
        m{\G(\s+)}gcsx and do {
            $ret .= $1;
            next inlineLOOP;
        };
        m{\G( $allowed )( $re_balanced_angles )}gcsx and do {
            TRACE "# $dent allowed<> { $1 ( $2 ) }";
            $ret .= inline_allowed( "$1" , "$2" , $dent );
            next inlineLOOP;
        };
        m{\G([^<]+\s)}gcmx and do {
            TRACE "# $dent text { $1 }";
            $ret .= inline_text( "$1" );
            next inlineLOOP;
        };;;
        m{\G([\<\>])}gcmx and do {
            TRACE "## $dent error-stray<> { $1 } at pos(@{[pos]})";
            last inlineLOOP;
        };;;
        m{\G(\S)}gcmx and do {
            TRACE "# $dent inch-forward { $1 }";
            $ret .= inline_text( "$1" );
            next inlineLOOP;
        };;;
    }
    $ret;
}

sub inline_allowed {
    my( $tag , $stuff, $dent ) = @_;
    $stuff = $1 if $stuff =~ m{^<(.*)>$}gs;
    
    my $ret = "";
    $ret .= "<\L$tag\E" if $tag;
    
    $stuff =~ s{\|([^<>]+)$}{$ret .= " $1"; "";}gsex if defined $stuff
+ ;
    ## inline_allowed_atts($tag,$1);
    $ret .= ">" if $tag;
    
    if( defined $stuff and length $stuff and $stuff =~ m{[<>]}g ){
        $ret .= inline( $stuff , $dent+1) ; ## recurse
    } else {
        $ret .= $stuff;
    }
    
    $ret .= "</\L$tag\E>" if $tag;
    $ret;
}

sub inline_text { join'',@_ }

1;
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