No, don't do that. It's too greedy:

my $string = "<first><second>blahblah<third>\n";
$string =~ s/<(.*)>//g;
print $string;
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Result: (Hey, it's blank!)

If you really want to do it this way, use: $string =~ s/<[^>]*?>//g; The question mark keeps the asterisk from slurping up any character -- including angle brackets -- to the end of the line, and then backtracking to pick up that last angle bracket. Of course, so does the negated character class. Just be more specific.