Perhaps another way is with a counted quantifier (see Quantifiers in perlre): 

>perl -wMstrict -le
"my $mail = 'Spam mail sPam spAm stealthspam mail spaM';
 print qq{you have the following mail: '$mail'};
 ;;
 my $spam = qr{ (?i) \b spam \b }xms;
 for my $n (2 .. 5) {
   if (my ($spams) = $mail =~ m{ ((?: .*? $spam){$n}) }xms) {
     print qq{there are $n spam emails in mail: '$spams'};
     }
   else {
     print qq{there are NOT $n spam emails in mail};
     }
   }
"
you have the following mail: 'Spam mail sPam spAm stealthspam mail spa
+M'
there are 2 spam emails in mail: 'Spam mail sPam'
there are 3 spam emails in mail: 'Spam mail sPam spAm'
there are 4 spam emails in mail: 'Spam mail sPam spAm stealthspam mail
+ spaM'
there are NOT 5 spam emails in mail

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In reply to Re: Limiting number of regex matches by AnomalousMonk
in thread Limiting number of regex matches by eversuhoshin

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