Yet another way to do it. This is not exactly what you asked, but it may help (tested):

$file= '<A NAME="TOC124" HREF="cvs.html#SEC124">A.8 commit--Check file
+s into the repository</A>';

 $c->{Anchor}{replace}= sub {
    $_[0] =~ s{<A NAME="(.*?)" HREF=".*?\#(.*?)">(.*?)</A>}
              {$3 |$2| *$1*}
 };

foreach $item (keys %$c) {
    $c->{$item}{replace}( $file );
}

print "$file\n";
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