$ perl -E 'my $s="ME170-5/2/8-ME172-2/2/6-ME4028"; while ($s=~m|(\d{1,2})/(\d{1,2})/(\d{1,2})|g){++$x;say "$x Found $1-$2-$3:" . pos($s)}' __OUTPUT__ 1 Found 5-2-8:11 2 Found 2-2-6:23