The fact that something is one line is not relevant. Consider this document as a single line-

It wouldn't make it any easier to parse. In your case, I'm guessing you're resisting a parser because your XML is invalid (aka, garbage). A parser *is* the way to go and if you provide real sample XML you'll probably get help with it. That said, this might do what you want without a parser-

my $doc = '<?xml version="1.0"?><root><a:b>one</a:b><a:b>two</a:b></ro
+ot>';
my $last = [ $doc =~ /a:b>([^<]+)/g ]->[-1];
print $last, $/;
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It won't be reliable or flexible though. :|

If you use an XPath capable parser/query engine, this is very easy, as getting the first and last node is just:

my $doc = ...; # read/parse XML file
my @first = $doc->findNodes('./*[1]');
my @last = $doc->findNodes('./*[last()]');
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This is one of the huge advantages that XML (and XPath) buy you - your code gets much clearer and quicker to write.

If you reject the best advice here, you're representing yourself.

There's good reason to avoid using regexen for your task: By and large, the mature XML modules are well tested, reliable, and consistent. They reflect the developer's (or developers') extensive knowledge of XML and the potential "edge-case gotcha's" ...and the community's.

Your regex isn't going to have those advantages.

Afterthought: You'll want to use &lt; and &gt; when you need less-than and greater-than symbols in narrative text... and foreswear the use of </br> (it isn't among the PM-approved markup tags.) Markup in the Monastery may help.

It is relatively easier if you use Expat Parser to parse the xml file and extract the contents based wrt tag. You may just require two functions strt and end.