Just a quick response for you...

If you add a ? after the *, it will make the expression non-greedy. As long as you don't have any nested tables, this will work. In greedy mode (the default), the regex will grab as much as it can into that .*, matching everything from the first correct table tag, through the very last closing table tag.

my $thispage = q{
  <TABLE border=0 cellPadding=2 cellSpacing=0>junk</TABLE>
  <TABLE border=0 bogusTag="Don't match this">more junk</TABLE>
  <TABLE border=0 cellPadding=2 cellSpacing=0>most junk</TABLE>
};
$thispage=~s/<TABLE border=0 cellPadding=2 cellSpacing=0>.*?<\/TABLE>/
+/g;
print $thispage;
[download]

outputs:
<TABLE border=0 cellPadding=2 cellSpacing=1>more junk</TABLE>

There are better answers to this problem, as others have posted, but I think this "fixes" your regex... :-)

Russ