I'm not sure whether I've understood your problem. Can it be that your problem is solved using backreferences in the split// regexp?

@stuff = split m{
        <!--end-->
        <a \s name=" ( \d+ ) "></a>
        <!--start-->
        }x => $data;
[download]

See `perldoc -f split` to see what happens with your backreference $1.

Another option is to use a parsing while(REGEXP):

while( $data =~ m{ \G
            <a \s+ href = " (\d+) "></a>
            <!--start-->
            ( .+? )
            <!--end-->
        }xg ){
    my $number = $1;
    my $data   = $2;
    #...
}
[download]

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