Like this?

#! perl -slw
use strict;

my @examples = qw[ AB23C ABC23 23BC ABC ];

m[([A-Z]*)([0-9]*)([A-Z]*)]
    and printf "%s: '%s', '%s', '%s'\n", $_, $1//'', $2//'', $3//''
    for @examples;

__END__
C:\test>1148522
AB23C: 'AB', '23', 'C'
ABC23: 'ABC', '23', ''
23BC: '', '23', 'BC'
ABC: 'ABC', '', ''
[download]

Neat.

Using your code as inspiration, I wrote something that creates the data structure instead of only printing out the results.

use strict;
use warnings;
use Data::Dump 'pp';

my @examples = qw[ AB23C ABC23 23BC ABC ];
my @out; push @out, [ m/([A-Z]*)([0-9]*)([A-Z]*)/ ] for @examples;
pp @out;

__END__
(
  ["AB", 23, "C"],
  ["ABC", 23, ""],
  ["", 23, "BC"],
  ["ABC", "", ""],
)
[download]

Nice. Though rather than pre-declaring @out and then pushing to it, I'd use map to initialise @out directly:

@out = map[ m[([A-Z]*)([0-9]*)([A-Z]*)] ], qw[ AB23C ABC23 23BC ABC ];
+;

pp \@out;;
[
  ["AB", 23, "C"],
  ["ABC", 23, ""],
  ["", 23, "BC"],
  ["ABC", "", ""],
]
[download]

---

With the rise and rise of 'Social' network sites: 'Computers are making people easier to use everyday'

Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.

"Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority". I knew I was on the right track :)

In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.

split allows to specify a regular expression. For your application something like split /(\d+)/ should work. You need to put the regex into parentheses as you want to keep the numbers.

This is a good idea in general, but won't work for the OP specific requirement: ABC23 will be split into ABC and 23, but split won't generate a third empty string.

For example:

$ perl -E ' say map { qq{"$_" }}  split /(\d+)/ for qw[ AB23C ABC23 23
+BC ABC ]'
"AB" "23" "C"
"ABC" "23"
"" "23" "BC"
"ABC"
[download]

Use of split can be stretched for the case of xyz268 ...

split /([0-9]+)/ , $string , 3
[download]

... but still fails for the case of xyz.