in reply to Pattern Match Problem
$ perl -le' @x = ( q[gif"></td><td>XXX</td></tr>], q[gif"></td><td>XXX</td></tr>], q[gif"></td><td><b>XXX</td><td><b>yyy</td></tr>] ); for ( @x ) { print $1 if /gif">(?:<[^>]*>)*([^<]*)/ } ' XXX XXX XXX [download]