You want to strip out all the tags from the original data, but gether them all in a separate place? Okay, instead of doing nothing ("1"), gather the data.

my @extragted_tags;
push @extracted_tags, $1 while s/$pattern/" " x length $1/ge;
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(Not tested, either!)

This puts the separate tags in separate elements of @extracted_tags. If you want them all together in a single string, try this.

my $extracted_tags;
$extracted_tags .= $1 while s/$pattern/" " x length $1/ge;
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The better you manage to specify what you want to do, the easier it will be for you to do it.

Sir, I am not concerned with the html tags i.e, I don't want to extract the html tags. My sole purpose is to convert the html tags into spaces, thats it. I think u can understand my problem.

Okay, this time I just tested something on the command line, and it appears to work. At least for simple HTML with no confusing attributes in tags:

perl -le '$d = "<moose>elk</moose>"; $p = qr/<.*?>/; $d =~ s/$p/" " x length $1/ge; print $d'

The is even simpler than what I suggested previously:

• the regexp is very simple: make a non-greedy match from < to >
• no need for the '1 while' construct. Just use the /g modifier.

But once again, one of the HTML parsers may do a better job at this.