Your use of

 [^</]
[download]

in the regex:

if ($intext =~ s#$links{$_}([^</]+)</a>#$1#ig)
[download]

leads me to wonder if you might be thinking that the </ is acting as a unit.

The way it is written I believe you'll be looking for any character not equal to < and not equal to /.

There could be a / in your text for some of the links.

For example: "This stuff and/or that stuff"

Claude