It's not clear to me what you are trying to achieve. Can you please post some short example strings that should be accepted and ignored, a few of each, indicating which is which?

Update: Your regex is basic enough (i.e., no regex features added after Perl version 5.6) that YAPE::Regex::Explain may be enlightening (update: fixed the regex: added [] as needed per this):

c:\@Work\Perl\monks>perl -wMstrict -le
"use YAPE::Regex::Explain;
 ;;
 print YAPE::Regex::Explain->new(qr/\b(\s*([a-zA-Z ]+)\s((-?[0-9]){1,2
+})\b)/)->explain;
"
The regular expression:

(?-imsx:\b(\s*([a-zA-Z ]+)\s((-?[0-9]){1,2})\b))

matches as follows:

NODE                     EXPLANATION
----------------------------------------------------------------------
(?-imsx:                 group, but do not capture (case-sensitive)
                         (with ^ and $ matching normally) (with . not
                         matching \n) (matching whitespace and #
                         normally):
----------------------------------------------------------------------
  \b                       the boundary between a word char (\w) and
                           something that is not a word char
----------------------------------------------------------------------
  (                        group and capture to \1:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
    \s*                      whitespace (\n, \r, \t, \f, and " ") (0
                             or more times (matching the most amount
                             possible))
----------------------------------------------------------------------
    (                        group and capture to \2:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
      [a-zA-Z ]+               any character of: 'a' to 'z', 'A' to
                               'Z', ' ' (1 or more times (matching
                               the most amount possible))
----------------------------------------------------------------------
    )                        end of \2
----------------------------------------------------------------------
    \s                       whitespace (\n, \r, \t, \f, and " ")
----------------------------------------------------------------------
    (                        group and capture to \3:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
      (                        group and capture to \4 (between 1 and
                               2 times (matching the most amount
                               possible)):
----------------------------------------------------------------------
        -?                       '-' (optional (matching the most
                                 amount possible))
----------------------------------------------------------------------
        [0-9]                    any character of: '0' to '9'
----------------------------------------------------------------------
      ){1,2}                   end of \4 (NOTE: because you are using
                               a quantifier on this capture, only the
                               LAST repetition of the captured
                               pattern will be stored in \4)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
    )                        end of \3
----------------------------------------------------------------------
    \b                       the boundary between a word char (\w)
                             and something that is not a word char
----------------------------------------------------------------------
  )                        end of \1
----------------------------------------------------------------------
)                        end of grouping
----------------------------------------------------------------------
[download]

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