Below is my humble offering (including test code) to this question-if it does not serve your need, may it at least serve as a source of instruction by those wiser of mistakes to avoid. 

#!/usr/bin/perl -- -l -w
use strict;

my @mylist = qw(a b k aa bab kick joke aaaaaaa babab kickker);
my @ignore = qw(a.*a.*a.*a b.*b.*b k.*k.*k);

print(join(' ', @mylist), "\n");    # Display, space-seperated

foreach my $toignore (@ignore) {
    @mylist = grep(!/$toignore/i, @mylist);
}

print(join(' ', @mylist), "\n");    # Display, space-seperated

[download]

Am I incorrect in seeing that you want to ignore if count(a) > 3, count(b) > 2, or count(k) > 2, meaning that 3 a's, 2 b's, and/or 2 k's are allowable? Basically, I'm filtering @mylist using the grep() function to match against anything not containing the current pattern I'm looking at, case-insensitively. Also, since my @ignore list is the patterns to match, would they be better served by qr() rather than qw()? (Still learning those types of functions.) Are those grep()s going to tax the machine badly this way?

In reply to Re: Excluding words with more than three a by atcroft
in thread Excluding words with more than three a by Anonymous Monk

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