use strict;
my $str = 'La vida <i>es</i> bella.';
my $regex = qr/\x3ci\x3e(.{1,3})\x3c\/i\x3e/p;
my $subst = '$1';
my $result = $str =~ s/$regex/$subst/r;
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