Is there NO way to capture all the matches to a numerically quantified subexpression? e.g.: 
my $ham = "spam\tspam\tspam\t\tyam\tclam";
my @jam = ($ham =~ (m/^[^\t]*\t[^\t]*(?:\t([^\t]*)){3}\t[^\t]*$/));
print join("\n", '**', @jam, '**', '');

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What I get is this: 
**
yam
**

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because each subsequent match to the group stomps on the previous one. What I want is this: 
**
spam

yam
**

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I have searched and searched and searched for a simple answer to this, and I have come up empty. Note that, for my purposes, the solution of pulling the inner set of three out as a string and splitting that string on tabs is NOT satisfactory: I want/need to grab all the desired fields in one go. This should be trivial, yet it seems to be impossible.

In reply to How to capture quantified repeats? by whatever

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