Hi, I have a problem that sounds very simple: if you found a hit within a webpage's source, how can you find out if this hit is part of a link, or more generally, within a tag? I tried the following code with finds the first string correctly, but also the second one that should not match. 
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

my @strings = (
'<a href="#1">HIT<b>MUST MATCH</b></a> <a href="#2">2</a>',
'<a href="#1">HIT<a name="MUST NOT MATCH">-</a> <a href="#2">2</a>'
); 
 
foreach my $string (@strings) {
"" =~ /()/;        # set $1 to false
$string =~ /
(                        # the whole match should be catches as $1
    HIT                    # start at the first found "HIT"
    (?=                    # begin of positive Lookahead
        [^<]*?            # zero or more characters other than "<" 
        (?!                # start a negative Lookahead
            <a[^>]*?>    # an opening a tag is forbidden
        )                
        .*?<\/a>        # any characters until the closing a tag
    )                    # end of positive Lookahead
    .*?                    # catch all chars after HIT,
    <\/a>                # non-greedy until the first closing a tag
)
/x;

print "\nstring:\t$string\n";
if ($1) { print "match:\t$1\n" }
else { print "NO match!\n" }
}

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I think the problem is related to my use of the negative Lookahead. Could anybody point me to the right direction? Thanks, rob.

In reply to negative Lookahead or by eddmund

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
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