You might be looking for $+. Quoting the docs:

The text matched by the last bracket of the last successful search pattern. This is useful if you don't know which one of a set of alternative patterns matched. For example:

/Version: (.*)|Revision: (.*)/ && ($rev = $+);

In reply to Re: RegExp, grabbing first name by Anonymous Monk
in thread RegExp, grabbing first name by Anonymous Monk

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