$contents_of_file =~ s/\<a.*?\>(.*?)\<\/a\>/$1/igs;

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And you're done. No need to get all complicated and stuff...

If the links aren't ever broken across multiple lines, you don't even need to write a script: 
$ perl -pi -e 's/\<a.*?\>(.*?)\<\/a\>/$1/igs' *.html

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If there are links broken across multiple lines, like 
<a href="something"> foo!
</a>

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Those would require manual cleanup, but you can just grep for 'href' to see if there's any left. If there look like a lot, then you can bust out a script to do it.

In reply to Re: Replacing Text by saintly
in thread Replacing Text by pyro.699

Title:
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