Hi Rolf, thanks for your quick reply. The look-ahead did the trick: 
$ perl -le '$str = q{AND (random text) OR (more random text) AND (yet 
+(more))};print "$1: $2" while ($str =~ /(AND|OR)\s+(.+?)(?=AND|OR|$)/
+g)'
AND: (random text) 
OR: (more random text) 
AND: (yet (more))

[download]
In this exercise, I don't know in advance whether $1 will match "AND" or "OR", so I do want that value captured, which is why I didn't want to use split.

Funny that you should ask about embedded nested ANDs or ORs. The system I'm working on would benefit from this, but I'd have to deal with balanced parentheses and use recursion probably to parse the entire structure. Assuming I could refine to code to do this accurately, I'd probably just end up hung by my own petard...

Many thanks! -Harry

In reply to Re^2: simple perl regex question (or is it?) by cadphile
in thread simple perl regex question (or is it?) by cadphile

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