#! usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;
my @vars;
$_='1: A a A silly a sentence a (495,a) *BUT* one a which is a will be useful. (3)';
if (@vars= /(\s)(a)(\s)/ig){
	print "the text matches the pattern '\$pattern'.\n";
	foreach (@vars) {
		print "Group: $_\n";
	}
}
else {
print " it was not found. \n";
}
print "@vars\n";