unless you want to modify the string there is no need to use a s/// regexp, just use m// to find the pattern and assign it to $1 or to a scalar:
Code:
$string = '<some element url = "www.gosomewhere.com" type = "some type" />';
$string =~ /"(.*?)"/;
print $1;
Code:
$string = '<some element url = "www.gosomewhere.com" type = "some type" />';
($domain) = $string =~ /"(.*?)"/;
print $domain;
The parenthesis are important in the above code.