First, use the HTML::Parser module or HTML::TokeParser, or in your case, probably the HTML::HeadParser module to parse the HTML. Regular expressions won't work. What if you have an HTML document with like: 
<!--
I changed this, it was just <head><title></title></head>
 - djb (03 Jul 2001)
-->
<head>
<title>Blah</title>
<meta name="DESCRIPTION" value="About </head> tags.">
</head>

[download]
That's a whole lot harder to parse with regular expression.

That said [.\n] creates a character class matching a period and a newline. The []s interperate .s as not special. You could use the /s modifier (see perlre) and just use .+ instead. The /s modifier will make . match even newlines. Another way is to use (?:.|\n) which is the same as (.|\n) except that it doesn't capture anything (into the $<digit> variables.)

Also you need to actually escape / in regexs if you are using / as the deliminator with like: \/, or you can avoid that ugliness by using an alternate deliminator (like m!regex goes here! or m(regex).) I assume the lack of a / at the end of your regex is an error made in posting your code here.

update: To give another example of why not to use a regex: <head something="someattribute">...</head> won't be handled by a simple regex either.

update 2: fixed typo of </head> where </title> was meant and other minor typos.

In reply to Re: a regex to parse html tags by wog
in thread a regex to parse html tags by Anonymous Monk

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.