One possibility which is admittedly ugly but should be reasonably futureproofed is using @+ and @- in combination with substr to pull the values out the original string; as quoted from @ :

After a match against some variable $var:

    * $` is the same as substr($var, 0, $-[0])
    * $& is the same as substr($var, $-[0], $+[0] - $-[0])
    * $' is the same as substr($var, $+[0])
    * $1 is the same as substr($var, $-[1], $+[1] - $-[1])
    * $2 is the same as substr($var, $-[2], $+[2] - $-[2])
    * $3 is the same as substr($var, $-[3], $+[3] - $-[3])
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