You need to provide more context, but I suspect you are trying to parse one line at a time, but match strings that span several lines.

I strongly suggest that you use a module such as XML::Twig to parse XML! Consider:

use strict;
use warnings;
use XML::Twig;

my $twig = XML::Twig->new (twig_roots => {content => \&contents});
my $xml = do {local $/; <DATA>};

$twig->parse ($xml);


sub contents {
    my ($twig, $contents) = @_;
    my @children = $contents->children ();
    my @wanted = qw(id title published);
    my $match = join '|', @wanted;
    my %params;

    for my $child (grep {$_->tag () =~ /^($match)$/} @children) {
        $params{$child->tag ()} = $child->text ();
    }

    print join "\t", @params{@wanted};
}


__DATA__
<data>
    <content>
        <id>http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos/5InqyMvRZ8o/comm
+ents/7307D6E7F6E2D1B8
        </id>
        <published>2007-04-05T12:05:42.000-07:00
        </published>
        <updated>2007-04-05T12:05:42.000-07:00
        </updated>
        <category scheme='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#kind' term=
+'http://gdata.youtube.com/schemas/2007#comment'/>
        <title type='text'>Fantastisk video,, ...
        </title>
         Keep up the good work. - jeg glder mig meget til at se flere 
+videoer fra dig..uper billeder du har fundet (:
    </content>
    <link rel='related' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://gdata
+.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos/5InqyMvRZ8o'/>
    <link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://www.youtube.co
+m/watch?v=5InqyMvRZ8o'/>
    <link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://gdata.yo
+utube.com/feeds/api/videos/5InqyMvRZ8o/comments/7307D6E7F6E2D1B8'/>
    <author>
        <name>cajaneil
        </name>
        <uri>http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/users/cajaneil
        </uri>
    </author>
</data>
[download]

Prints:

http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos/5InqyMvRZ8o/comments/7307D6E
+7F6E2D1B8
            Fantastisk video,, ...
            2007-04-05T12:05:42.000-07:00
[download]

Note that I altered the XML to make it valid and that I chose elements that exist as children of content for demonstration purposes. You will need to alter the code to suit what you are actually doing.

Otherwise, based on that data, it looks like it aughta match. Are you sure the data in $x looks how you think it looks?

Your example doesn't even contain an open tag for <content>?

that was a mistake copying, sorry. this is the actual data, i had another line in the code which printed it out. I spoke to the admin, got me some root privileges, and installed XML::Simple. at that point, solving the problem and getting the data was, well, simple! thanks!