The greed removing modifier ? affects where the match ends, not where it starts. It always starts matching as early as possible. You want: 

s{<tr (?:(?!<tr).)* NOTWANTED .*? </tr>}{}xgs;

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(?:(?!<tr).)* reads as "0 or more characters which do not match the regex <tr". It is to regex what [^abc]* is to characters.

By the way, I switched from s/// to s{}{} since / is a common characters in HTML. I also removed the m switch since you use neither ^ nor $.

In reply to Re: greedy/nongreedy regex replacement by ikegami
in thread greedy/nongreedy regex replacement by svenXY

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