Two things: don't use a regex, but if you do, try debugging it with re 'debug'.

Don't use a regex: you're not actually matching text here, you're trying to parse it. Use Parse::RecDescent or something similar to parse data like this. Regular expressions are powerful, but I don't think they're really suited to the task at hand.

If you must stick with a regex, reduce the text to the absolute minimum that gives you unexpected results and use re 'debug'. Read the output on the following to get a feel for how it works:

use strict;
use re 'debug';

my $test = "123avc 8c7d45";
$test =~ /(c[^c]+d)/;
print $1;

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Cheers,
Ovid

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In reply to (Ovid) Re: really large regex misbehaving - WTF by Ovid
in thread really large regex misbehaving by Anonymous Monk

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