I agree that use of an XML parser is likely to be a better idea, but just an example of what your fellow monks were hoping for as an example of what you tried and what resulted (except this works): 

>perl -wMstrict -le
"my $s = qq{xxx </div>\n</body> xxx};
 print qq{[[$s]]};
 ;;
 my $tags = qr{ </div> \n </body> }xms;
 $s =~ s{ $tags }{gone}xms;
 print qq{[[$s]]};
"
[[xxx </div>
</body> xxx]]
[[xxx gone xxx]]

[download]

Question: Are you sure it's only a single newline that's present? The presence of other whitespace characters than just a newline can confuse the issue. The following might be a better regex:
    qr{ </div> \s* </body> }xms

In reply to Re^3: Perl RE; how to capture, and replace based on a block? by AnomalousMonk
in thread Perl RE; how to capture, and replace based on a block? by taint

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