First, thanks to all who tried to help... and especially to those (most of you) of nailed the problem immediately, pointing out that the way I used the input record separator, $/, had logical problems, as AnomalousMonk, tye (second guess) and Athanasius noted.

The solution involved simply moving - as an elsif... - the /$eot/ test down below the regex looking for error messages (Ln33-34 in the OP's "whereas...." code block).

... and for anyone still reading, mea culpa, I should have noted (in the OP!) that the html in the raw data horribly and unnecessarily convoluted and that the /$eot/ sequence occurs only once at the very end of the data file. Its only utility is to supress an inconsequential warning. Also,  my $trterminator = qr[</tr>\n</table></td></tr></table>]; is never used (it appears only once but that did not produce any warnings, an occurance suggesting I better review the docs).

Still, despite the shortcomings of the OP, Monks and the Monastery came thru in "class A" fashion. Again, thanks!

check Ln42!

In reply to Re: Example of brainfog (Was: inconsistent regex matching) by ww
in thread Example of brainfog (Was: inconsistent regex matching) by ww

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