Don't use substitution when you really just want to match:

($current) = $everything =~ m/<!---CURCON-->(.*)<!---END CURCON-->/s;
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...should work just fine. $current will now contain everything between the comments. If you want to insert the contents of $current somewhere else, there's no need to use another regex:

$new = $start . $current . $end;
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...which will sandwich $current between $start and $end, which is what it looks like you want.

Gary Blackburn
Trained Killer