regex - How to stop .+ at the first instance of a character and not the last with regular expressions in perl? -

i want replace:

'''<font size="3"><font color="blue"> summer/winter configuration files</font></font>''' 

with:

='''<font color="blue"> summer/winter configuration files</font>'''= 

now existing code is:

$html =~ s/\n(.+)<font size=\".+?\">(.+)<\/font>(.+)\n/\n=$1$2$3=\n/gm 

however ends result:

=''' summer/winter configuration files</font>'''= 

now can see happening, matching <font size ="..... way end of <font colour blue"> not want, want stop @ first instance of " not last, thought putting ? mark there do, i've tried .+ .+? .* , .*? same result each time.

anyone got ideas doing wrong?

as mark said, use cpan this.

#!/usr/bin/env perl  use strict; use warnings; use html::treebuilder;  $s = q{<font size="3"><font color="blue"> summer/winter configuration files</font></font>};  $tree = html::treebuilder->new; $tree->parse( $s );  print $tree->find_by_attribute( color => 'blue' )->as_html;  # => <font color="blue"> summer/winter configuration files</font> 

this works specific case, however:

#!/usr/bin/env perl  use strict; use warnings;  $s = q{<font size="3"><font color="blue"> summer/winter configuration files</font></font>};  print $s =~ m{                  < .+? >                  (.+)?                  </.+? >                              }mx;  # => <font color="blue"> summer/winter configuration files</font>