The code seemed to work for me.

Using pm_txt.txt for input for pm_regex.pl pm_txt.txt 

1.hello>
2.<hello
3.hello
<hello>

[download]

pm_regex.pl

use strict;
use warnings;

my $filename = shift or die "Usage $0 FILENAME\n";

open my $fh, '<', $filename or die "Could not open '$filename'\n";

while (my $line = <$fh>) {
    chomp $line;
    if ($line =~ /^\d+\..*?(hello).*$/) {
        print "In $line $1 matches\n";
    } else {
        print "$line doesn't match\n";
    }
}

[download]

Running perl pm_regex.pl pm_text.txt produced the output:

In 1.hello> hello matches

In 2.<hello hello matches

In 3.hello hello matches

<hello> doesn't match

In reply to Re^3: regec to select text ather than remove HTML tags by lutok
in thread regec to select text ather than remove HTML tags by Anonymous Monk

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