I'm just guessing as to your intention, but if you mean that each element will hold an array ref of middle elements, try the following:

use strict;
my @array = qw/ ***1*** first second ***end1*** ***2*** third fourth *
+**end2*** /;

my @new_array;
foreach my $element ( @array ) {
    my $mark = quotemeta "***";
    my $where = ( $element =~ /$mark(\d+)$mark/ .. $element =~ /${mark
+}end$1+$mark/ );
    push @{$new_array[ $1 - 1 ]}, $element if $where != 1 and $where !
+~ /E/ ;
}

use Data::Dumper;
print Dumper \@new_array;

[download]

Output from above snippet:

$VAR1 = [
          [
            'first',
            'second'
          ],
          [
            'third',
            'fourth'
          ]
        ];

[download]

If you want the array elements to hold a concatenated string, change the push to a concatenation.

Cheers,
Ovid

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Update: Fixed stupid little useless loop that chipmunk alerted me to :)

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In reply to (Ovid - the lone range operator to the rescue!) Re: sorting an array by Ovid
in thread sorting an array by maddfisherman

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