Why not just use one regular expression? 
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;

my $start_pattern = '<!-- start section-->';
my $end_pattern = '<!-- end section -->';
my @files_to_look_in = ("/path/to/files1.html", "/path/to/files2.html"
+);

for(@files_to_look_in) {
    local $/;
    open(HTM_FILE, <$_) || die "Can't open file: $!";
    my $file = <HTM_FILE>;
    if ($file =~ /$start_pattern(.*)$end_pattern/s) {
        print "$1";
    }
}

[download]

Note: If I hadn't localized $/ (the input record seperator), I would have needed to add a /s modifier to the regular expression to match on the whole file.

cLive ;-)

update: oops, not paying attention "while" is now "for". 2) made a boo-boo - see below...

In reply to Re: Grabbing part of an HTML page by cLive ;-)
in thread Grabbing part of an HTML page by kingdean

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.