Something like this ought to do the trick: 

$xml =~ s/<(.*?)name>/<$1names>/g;

[download]

[id://CountZero] is right, I misread the original question. I thought the OP simply wanted to replace the "name" tags with "names." Oops.

In reply to Re: replacing continuesly occuring pattern by friedo
in thread replacing continuesly occuring pattern by Ananda

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