We all know that "In list context, a regex match returns a list of captured substrings." And, we also know "Numeric quantifiers express the number of times an atom may match. {n} means that a match must occur exactly n times." So can the numeric quantifier work with the captured substrings? 

perl -E '$s = q[AAD34017837201D98AAED18778DEF993]; 
say length($s), " ", $s;
@m = $s =~ /(....)(....)(....)(....)(.+)/; 
say "", join("-",@m);'
# 32 AAD34017837201D98AAED18778DEF993
# AAD3-4017-8372-01D9-8AAED18778DEF993

[download]

In contrast, the following regex uses a numeric quantifier but does not work as above: 

perl -E '$s = q[AAD34017837201D98AAED18778DEF993]; 
say length($s), " ", $s;
@m = $s =~ /(....){4}(.+)/; 
say "", join("-",@m);'
# 32 AAD34017837201D98AAED18778DEF993
# 01D9-8AAED18778DEF993

[download]

So, is there a way to use capture groups to match multiple times like separate groups does in the first example?

In reply to mysteries of regex substring matching by smile4me

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