You don't mention why split is not an option. I am guessing because you aren't just trying to split a string on some delimiter, you are trying to learn regexes, and this is a problem you feel comfortable with. There is nothing wrong with that, but realize that what pzbagel said was your answer ... your values are stored in the array. What you are trying to do - match some arbitrary numbers of items and populate $1 through $N inside the match operator just doesn't make sense to me. I mean, that's what the g modifier is for ... match all occurances, no matter how many you find.

You hint and Java and Python, but you don't specify what language you are really trying to solve this problem in. If i had to guess, i would say you are using PHP or some Java library that modeled itself against Perl's regexes. Can't help you with the Java stuff, but if it's PHP you are using, then try preg_match_all(). It is like preg_match with Perl's g match modifer, but it's usage is a bit tricky: 
<?php
$mystr = 'foo,bar,moo,cow';
preg_match_all('/(\w+)\,?/',$mystr,$matches);
?>

<ul>
<?php foreach ($matches[1] as $match) { ?>
   <li><?=$match?></li>
<?php } ?>
</ul>

[download]
If you are using Python, then you can use the exact same regex with Python's re.findall(): 
#!/usr/bin/python
from re import findall

mystr  = 'foo,bar,moo,cow'
values = findall('(\w+)\,?',mystr)

for val in values: print val

[download]
Hope this helps, i feel kinda dirty now ... PHP and Python at a Perl site! ;)

jeffa

L-LL-L--L-LL-L--L-LL-L--
-R--R-RR-R--R-RR-R--R-RR
B--B--B--B--B--B--B--B--
H---H---H---H---H---H---
(the triplet paradiddle with high-hat)

In reply to (jeffa) 3Re: More Variable length regex issues by jeffa
in thread More Variable length regex issues by dextius

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.