c:\@Work\Perl>perl -wMstrict -le "use Data::Dumper; ;; $_ = 'abcdfoofrobnicatebardefforspambazghi'; ;; my $re = qr{ (fo.) (.*?) (ba.) }xms; ;; my %res; while (/($re)/g) { $res{$1} = [ map eval qq{\$$_}, 2 .. $#- ]; } print Dumper \%res; " $VAR1 = { 'forspambaz' => [ 'for', 'spam', 'baz' ], 'foofrobnicatebar' => [ 'foo', 'frobnicate', 'bar' ] };