>perl -wMstrict -le "my $s = 'xxxx yy zzzzz xxxx qqq xxxx yy zzzzz xxxx qqq'; ;; for my $ar ([2, 4, 3], [5, 3]) { my $rx = rxg(@$ar); print $rx; my @groups = $s =~ m{ $rx }xmsg; print qq{'$_'} for @groups; } ;; sub rxg { my ($rx) = map qr{ \b $_ \b }xms, join ' \b .+? \b ', map qq{\\w{$_}}, @_ ; ;; return $rx; } " (?^msx: \b \w{2} \b .+? \b \w{4} \b .+? \b \w{3} \b ) 'yy zzzzz xxxx qqq' 'yy zzzzz xxxx qqq' (?^msx: \b \w{5} \b .+? \b \w{3} \b ) 'zzzzz xxxx qqq' 'zzzzz xxxx qqq'