Hmm... you've confused me a bit here. You have a typo in the code, and I'm not sure why you have the /x on your second regex. The /x merely means "allow extraneous whitespace and comments." 
#!/usr/bin/perl -l

$_ = '<a href= ?a=500011&w=2&r=1 >joe@blow.com</a>';

print $& if /^<a href.*>[^\z]/;
print $& if /^<a href.*>(?=[^\z])/;

[download]
This code prints: 
<a href= ?a=500011&w=2&r=1 >j
<a href= ?a=500011&w=2&r=1 >

[download]
Perhaps you want to use: 
/^<a [^>]+>([^<]+)/

[download]
That kinda matches a tag, followed by kinda the non-tag stuff after it.

_____________________________________________________
Jeff[japhy]Pinyan: Perl, regex, and perl hacker.
s++=END;++y(;-P)}y js++=;shajsj<++y(p-q)}?print:??;

In reply to Re: Extended Regular Expressions by japhy
in thread Extended Regular Expressions by jroberts

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