Hi, if I understand your question correct, you want to extract information from each token. So splitting the string into tokens first and then extracting any useful information one by one might be a suitable approach for you?

use strict;

sub extract {
  chomp(my $orig = shift);

  foreach ( split(/,/, $orig) ) { # scan list of tokens
    if ( / <\*\d+>  ([^<]+)  < (\d+) : (\d+) > /x ) {
      # do something with extracted information
      print "got $1/$2/$3 from '$orig'\n";
    }
  }
}


extract($_) while (<DATA>);

__DATA__
<*2>H<3:0>,<*2>I<3:0>,...,<*2>Z<2:0>
H<3:0>,<*2>I<3:0>,...,<*2>Z<2:0>
[download]

got H/3/0 from '<*2>H<3:0>,<*2>I<3:0>,...,<*2>Z<2:0>'
got I/3/0 from '<*2>H<3:0>,<*2>I<3:0>,...,<*2>Z<2:0>'
got Z/2/0 from '<*2>H<3:0>,<*2>I<3:0>,...,<*2>Z<2:0>'
got I/3/0 from 'H<3:0>,<*2>I<3:0>,...,<*2>Z<2:0>'
got Z/2/0 from 'H<3:0>,<*2>I<3:0>,...,<*2>Z<2:0>'
[download]