the /x switch allows white space and comments within a regular expression. This lets you break things into little pieces and comment out the pieces until the syntax errors go away.

use strict;
use warnings;
use diagnostics;
my $instream= 'empty';

$instream =~ s/
         <FONT
        (.+?) 
        COLOR\s?=\s?
        ('|")?
            (\#......)
            \2 
            (.+?)
            SIZE
        \s?=\s?
        ('|")?

################    (\d++)\5   #d+ not d++
            (.+?)
            FACE
        \s?=\s?
        ('|")?
            (.+?)
        \8
        [^>]*>
        \s*
        /genStyleCSF($3,$6,$9) 
    /iegx;
[download]

Also allow me to join the chorus suggesting a HTML parsing module....

email: mandog