to get everything in between... 
/>(.*?)<\/a>/;
print $1;

[download]
the first one doesn't get everything as you expect because the [^\z] matches one non-EOL char so...
  1. .* gobbles everything to EOL
  2. the regex backtracks to match the > (last char on line)
  3. regex attempts to match a non-EOL char - FAIL - no chars left in string
  4. regex backtracks to match the previous >
  5. regex matches a non-EOL char "j" - COMPLETE
the second one just _looks_ for a non-EOL after the match but is zero-width so works as you expect.

hope this helps 

   larryk                                          
perl -le "s,,reverse killer,e,y,rifle,lycra,,print"

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

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