c:\@Work\Perl\monks>perl -wMstrict -MData::Dump -le
"my $str = 'mary had a little lamb';
 ;;
 my $word = qr{ [[:alpha:]]+ }xms;
 ;;
 my @words = ($str =~ m{ $word }xmsg)[0 .. 2];
 dd \@words;
"
["mary", "had", "a"]