If you wanted to grab the first 36 chars from the start of a string, then grab the first subsequent group that was terminated by (and did not contain) a \0\0\0 sequence, what regex would you use?

Yes, AnomalousMonk, you are right, if I wanted to do that, I would probably use a regex very similar to what roboticus used. I was really wondering why he wanted to do something a bit strange like that, and he has not provided an answer which explains it all.