I certainly endorse using CPAN for complete solutions or for useful methods of attack. However, sometimes you just have to make your own wheel.

The following approach decomposes regexes into much more easily understandable and maintainable parts. While it's a lot more typing to begin with, the gain in robustness and maintainability is, I find, well worth the cost. 

use warnings;
use strict;

my $rx_comma = qr{ \s* , \s* }xms;

my $rx_date = qr{ \d{4} - \d\d - \d\d }xms;

my $rx_name      = qr{ [[:alpha:]] (?: '? [[:alpha:]]+)? }xms;
my $rx_hyphenate = qr{ - $rx_name                        }xms;
my $rx_surname   = qr{ $rx_name $rx_hyphenate?           }xms;
my $rx_initial   = qr{ [[:alpha:]] \.                    }xms;
my $rx_givenname = qr{ $rx_initial | $rx_surname         }xms;
my $rx_prof =
    qr{ $rx_surname (?: $rx_comma (?: \s* $rx_givenname )+ )? }xms;

# avoid polluting namespace with a bunch of common variable names.
my $rx_facility = do {
    my $room     = qr{ \d{3,4} [[:alpha:]]?          }xms;
    my $range    = qr{ $room (?: \s* - \s* $room)?   }xms;
    my $rooms    = qr{ $range (?: $rx_comma $range)* }xms;
    my $function = qr{ \( [^)]+ \)                   }xms;
    qr{ $rooms \s* $function }xms;  # final regex
    };

$/ = "";  # paragrep mode

while (my $entry = <DATA>) {

my ($date, $prof, @facilities) =
    $entry =~ m{ $rx_date | $rx_prof | $rx_facility }xmsg;

print <<EOS;
date: '$date'
prof: '$prof'
facilities:
    '@{[ join qq{' \n    '}, @facilities ]}'
EOS

}

__DATA__
2006-01-01,O'Reilly,Watson B.,
406,560(centrifuge,refrig.),
569b,607(dark room),210-211,101(ultracentrifuge),
104-105(crystal growth rooms),660(centrifuge, refrig.)

2007-02-02, Olsen, Alfa-Betty Z. , 102a-102c, 104(media lab) ,
101(writer's lounge)

2008-03-04,Peebles, P.J.E.,
 1000a - 9999z (physical cosmology lab.),
 000-001 (computational cosmology lab)

[download]
Output: 
>perl regex_parse_fields_1.pl
date: '2006-01-01'
prof: 'O'Reilly,Watson B.'
facilities:
    '406,560(centrifuge,refrig.)'
    '569b,607(dark room)'
    '210-211,101(ultracentrifuge)'
    '104-105(crystal growth rooms)'
    '660(centrifuge, refrig.)'
date: '2007-02-02'
prof: 'Olsen, Alfa-Betty Z.'
facilities:
    '102a-102c, 104(media lab)'
    '101(writer's lounge)'
date: '2008-03-04'
prof: 'Peebles, P.J.E.'
facilities:
    '1000a - 9999z (physical cosmology lab.)'
    '000-001 (computational cosmology lab)'

[download]

In reply to Re: Regular Expression, Catching Variables by AnomalousMonk
in thread Regular Expression, Catching Variables by lev

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