Monks,

I may be overlooking something, but as far as I can tell, given the following strings (simplified from a real-world example, but sufficient for the purpose):

foo m 1 m 2 m 3 m 4 bar
foo m 2 m 4 m 7 bar
foo m 1 bar

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There may be any number of m digit sequences following 'foo'. You cannot group and capture an arbitrary number of times in a single pattern and get back all the captures? That is, the following does not work:

my (@match) = ($str =~ /^foo (?:m (\d+) )+bar/);

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That only captures the final digit group. I think the only way out is to use a pile of code and do something like

my @match;
if ($str =~ /^foo /) {
    while ($str =~ /m (\d+) /g) {
        push @match, $1;
    }
}

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There must be a simpler way, but I can't see it right now, worse, that solution doesn't strike me as being particularly well-anchored, that is, following 'foo'.

The chain of m digit+ could be anywhere in string, for instance, after 'bar', and it would be incorrect to match and capture them. Thanks for any suggestions and insights you may have.

• another intruder with the mooring in the heart of the Perl

In reply to Arbitrary number of captures in a regular expression by grinder

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