in reply to Regex text extraction b/w first intance of pattern X and third instance of pattern Y.

The "third instance of c" really means "everything not a c plus a c, plus everything not a c plus c, plus everything not a c upto but excluding the next c": 

"abcbcbc" =~ m[ a ( [^c]* c [^c]* c [^c]* ) c ]x and print "'$1'";;
'bcbcb'

## or 

"abcbcbc" =~ m[a((?:[^c]*c){2}[^c]*)c] and print "'$1'";;
'bcbcb'

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