#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings FATAL => qw( all );

use Text::Balanced qw(extract_bracketed);
use Data::Dumper;

my $text = 'A line with B<bold>, I<italic>, and B<I<bold and italic>> text.';

my @line = extract_bracketed( $text, '<>');

print Dumper(\@line);
##</code><code>##

$VAR1 = [
          undef,
          'A line with B<bold>, I<italic>, and B<I<bold and italic>> text.',
          undef
        ];