use strict;
my $str = '<p>Test contennt for regex
with line breaks</p>
<pre>code block
with multi line content
working fine</pre>
<pre class="brush:C#">
test line break before
open paranthesis < is not working fine
line breaks after paranthesis
is accepted
</pre>';
my $regex = qr/\n(?![^<]*<\/pre>)/mp;
my $subst = '';
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