Just out of curiosity, why not make the "inside of brackets" subexpression something more like 

      <
         (?:
            [^y>]*
            y (?{ local $c = $c + 1 })
         )*
         .*?
      >  # Closing bracket not optional

[download]
? I see that the original allows for the possibility of unmatched left angle brackets, but I don't see why one would want this; i.e. I don't see why one would want to count the "y" in "<xyz", for example, but not the one in "xyz>".

the lowliest monk

In reply to Re^2: Regexes: finding ALL matches (including overlap) by tlm
in thread Regexes: finding ALL matches (including overlap) by kaif

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