If I understand you well, your input line looks like '3256 nothing special 356216'. In this case it's enough to match digit, non-digit and digit again...

#!/usr/bin/perl
while (<>) {
        print if m/(\d+)\D+(\d+)/;
        print "$1\n$2\n";
}

[download]
The output is: 
tm@norad:~$ ./regex_test
123 testing... testing 456
123 testing... testing 456
123
456

[download]
UPDATE: after reading next replies...
  1. .+ isn't the best notation - it shouldn't catch next digits after (\d+) but it's not specially safe AIMO, especially makes the code more difficoult to understand
  2. this 'to', whitespaces or other words you mentioned in your problem are covered with \D+ which IMvHO is more universal becouse of catching anything except digits

Greetz, Tom.

In reply to Re: $1 and regex by tmiklas
in thread $1 and regex by Anonymous Monk

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