I'm not sure what you're asking for here:

I want to keep these matches in the context of the larger string, while still being able to distinguish matches. Is there a way to substitute and return the successful event...

If "keep these matches in the context of the larger string" means "don't alter the string", then you wouldn't do a substitution; just do a match (with capturing parens), and assign the return value of the match to an array: 

my @strings =
    qw/XXXXXXXXXABXXXXXXX
       XXXXXXXBAXXXBBXXXX
       BBAABAABBXBX/;

for my $string ( @strings ) {
    my @matches = ( $string =~ /([AB]{2})/g );
    printf( "Found %d matches in %s: %s\n",
             scalar @matches, $string, join( ', ', @matches ));
}

[download]
Perhaps you'd like to mention what you're really trying to accomplish?

In reply to Re: Regex Pipe Return by graff
in thread Regex Pipe Return by TapTapTaperoo

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.