Hi,
As is frequently the case, the problem cames from misunderstunding greadines of RE + and * operators. Let us take

/\s+(.*)\s+(.*)/
[download]

which is a simpler version of your RE, and try and match it against "___abc___def" (the "_" represents spaces). First, perl matches \s+ against the three spaces, and the first (.*) against all the other acaracters (that is "abc___def". But now there is a \s+, which require at least a space, so the first .* grundly gives back one character at time, until it only matches "abc__" (two spaces). Now \s+ matches this space, and the second (.*) is free to match "def". After that, $1 is "abc__", and $2 is "def".

I hope this explain things...

Cheers

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Leo TheHobbit