in reply to extract string between 2 elements

If you are looking to capture HTML tags, this regex may help you get started: 
     ~m/<(.[^>]*)>/g

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However, this is easily fooled by text disguised as tags. Use a real HTML/XML parser for production work.

     Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.        --Alan Perlis

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom