in reply to Regular Expression

use HTML::TokeParser::Simple; 
 
my $p = HTML::TokeParser::Simple->new (\*DATA) or die; 
 
my $in_small = 0; 
while (my $token = $p->get_token) { 
  if ($token->is_start_tag('small')) { 
    $in_small++; 
  } elsif ($token->is_end_tag('small')) { 
    $in_small--; 
  } elsif (not $in_small) { 
    print $token->as_is; 
  } 
} 
__END__ 
 
<html><head><title>hello world</title></head><body> 
<h1>hello world</h1> 
Did you know that <small>this is small</small>? 
</body></html>

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-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker
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In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom