The author's correction is wrong. There should be a forward slash in front of the "B" in the last BOLD. I don't know if this will show up right, but here goes:


s#<BOLD>(.*)</BOLD>#$1#g;

Now for the second problem. The text says,

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....I'm talking about the cartoon with Fred and <BOLD>Wilma</BOLD>!

And here's a substitution to remove the tags. But what's wrong with it?

#<BOLD>(.*)</BOLD>#$1#g; #this is the corrected substitution

The problem is that the star is greedy.
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The star is in fact greedy, but there is absolutely nothing wrong with the substitution. It will work exactly the way a beginner will think it will on that string.

A suggestion: get rid of the first string:

"I'm talking about the cartoon with Fred and <BOLD>Wilma</BOLD>!"

and replace it by the second string:

'I thought you said Fred and <BOLD>Velma</BOLD>, not <BOLD>Wilma</BOLD>';

Then the problem with the first substitution will be abundantly clear to anyone who tries the code. There should only be one string on the page and two code snippets for the substitution.