use strict;
my $str = '<a href="[nggallery id=xx]"><span class="shutterset"><img class="alignnone size-large wp-image-23067" title="Image Title" src="http://example.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/image-title.jpg" alt="" width="685" height="456" /></span></a>
<a href="[nggallery id=xxxxx]">Click here!</a>
<a title="title title" href="[nggallery id=xxx]" target="_blank">Title Link Title Link</a>';
my $regex = qr/<a.*(\[nggallery[^\]+]*\]).*?<\/a>/p;
my $subst = '$1';
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