I was thinking about the “greedy” modifier, and how one would need to use this to avoid simply matching the entire string in a case like the one you have cited.
Ah, you mean as in "something equals /.*?/"? Then here's a question for you. How many times does "FOO.*?BAR" occur in "zero FOO one FOO two BAR three BAR four"?
Where can I perldoc to read more about such Higher Magick, that I may one day Impress My Friends, too?
Except for say, all will be revealed by reading man perlre. (Oh, and if you replace "(*FAIL)" with "(?!)", you could have done the trick ever since 5.005 - it's not something from this century).

Note also that 

    /(FOO.*?BAR)(??{ say $1 })(*FAIL)/;

[download]
and 
    /(FOO.*BAR)(??{ say $1 })(*FAIL)/;

[download]
print exactly the same matches, although in a possible different order.

In reply to Re^3: Grab "as many occurrences as there are" in a long string by JavaFan
in thread Grab "as many occurrences as there are" in a long string by locked_user sundialsvc4

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