Hi, having read your post a little more carefully, I think maybe this is a bit closer to what you want. $1 holds the match after "value=".

use strict;

my $line = qq(<textarea type="text" value="foo" name="text_message" />
+&nbsp;<%bar%>&nbsp;</p>);

if ($line =~ /<textarea .+ value="(.+?)".+(<%.+%>)/) {

    my $foo = $1;
    my $bar = $2;
    $line =~ s/<textarea/<input/;
    $line =~ s/$bar/$foo/;
    print $line;
    
}
[download]