Hi AnomalousMonk,

I'm sure we discussed this technique before, but I can't find it in the archives.

Do you remember a thread? :)

update

well I deciphered it in the meantime, it's not operating on match-groups but the /x /g ° modifier.

That'll repeat a search where the last match ended, and return all results in list context till it fails

  DB<139> p
0123456789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
  DB<139> x m{ .... }xg
0  0123
1  4567
2  '89ab'
3  'cdef'
4  'ghij'
5  'klmn'
6  'opqr'
7  'stuv'
8  'wxyz'
  DB<140>
[download]

with a negative look-behind (?<! ) we can filter out all matches after the initial 4

  DB<140> x m{ (?<! (?: .... ){4} ) .... }xg
0  0123
1  4567
2  '89ab'
3  'cdef'
  DB<141>
[download]

an or condition | helps matching after the fail.

  DB<142> x m{ (?<! (?: .... ){4} ) .... | .+ }xg
0  0123
1  4567
2  '89ab'
3  'cdef'
4  'ghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz'
  DB<143>
[download]

°) thanks AnomalousMonk++ for spotting :)