I want to read in a line with a text field, followed by 4 floats separated by unspecified non-numerics.

I used an RE of the form:
(text);(?:(float)[non-num]){4}

This matches as expected, but I'm only getting 2 substring matches instead of getting back the 5 desired substrings. $1 is the text field, but $2 is filled with the final float substring with strings 1-3 being tossed. This isn't desirable.

I could duplicate the sub-RE that has the {4} count tag, 4 times, but that seems wasteful and less clear. Is there a way to preserve my idea matching "4"-sub-RE's while also returning the 1st 3 matches?

Seems like such a simple concept...sigh. Is this doable without nibbling at the line in a loop that picks off the trailing numerics with successive search & replace operations? TIA -l

2006-02-18 Retitled by planetscape, as per Monastery guidelines
Original title: 'simple question ?'

In reply to capturing multiple repeated regex subparts by perl-diddler

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