use strict;
my $str = '<a id="page_123" class="garbage1"></a>some text<a id="page_124" class="garbage2"></a>';
my $regex = qr/(id="page_([0-9]+)" +class=)"[^"]*">/mp;
my $subst = '\\1"pagenum"> \\2 ';
my $result = $str =~ s/$regex/$subst/rg;
print "The result of the substitution is' $result\n";
Please keep in mind that these code samples are automatically generated and are not guaranteed to work. If you find any syntax errors, feel free to submit a bug report. For a full regex reference for Perl, please visit: http://perldoc.perl.org/perlre.html