You need to call the /g -modified regex in list context:

13:42 >perl -wMstrict -e "my $dna = 'xxxxxxpecbcbccrlxxxxxxpeeeerlxxxx
+xplxxxxxPeRLxxxx'; my @matches = $dna =~ /(p.*?l)/gi; print qq[$_\n] 
+for @matches;"
pecbcbccrl
peeeerl
pl
PeRL

13:42 >

[download]

See “Global Matching” in Using regular expressions in Perl.

Hope that helps,

Athanasius <°(((>< contra mundum Iustus alius egestas vitae, eros Piratica,

In reply to Re: Find and extract substring(s) within larger string. by Athanasius
in thread Find and extract substring(s) within larger string. by Anonymous Monk

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