Using regular expressions to parse XML is more trouble than it's worth (see XML parsing vs Regular expressions). Consider using a parser such as XML::Twig:

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

my $xmlStr = <<XML;
<item name="pdf_link">
           <value>http://www.yahoo.com</value>

</item>
XML

my $twig= XML::Twig->new(
    twig_handlers => { item => \&item }
);
$twig->parse($xmlStr);

sub item {
    my ($twig, $item) = @_;
    if ($item->att('name') eq 'pdf_link') {
        print $item->first_child('value')->text(), "\n";
    }
}

__END__

http://www.yahoo.com
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