I believe you can get the function to work expanding the regex a little bit. 

$s = "***ab***c"; 
$s =~ s/\*([^\n])/\*\n\1/ for 1 .. 2; 
print $s;

[download]

Output was:

*
*
*ab***c

[download]

Since you know the state it's going to be after it's changed, you can include that in the regex. Hence *, not followed by \n will match, along with the for loop suggested earlier, gives you your count. Using \1 here just puts the next value (after the matched *) back into the string.

Update: markkawika's comment might be below threshold, so I'll add it here as well, since his regex is better than mine. Suggested regex: s/\*(?!\n)/*\n/

In reply to Re^3: how to search and replace the match with specific number of times in a string by Verillion
in thread how to search and replace the match with specific number of times in a string by loki

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