This might help you out a bit.

http://perldoc.perl.org/perlretut.html

moritz was kind enough to suggest it for my problem which was similar. And I was able to come up with a solution for a similar problem.

http://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=866173

Especially the part on global matching

Global matching

Perl will assign the matches temporarily to $1 $2 $3 until the next match. You can assign them more permanently by building an array and heading onward to the next match.

I know the match reg ex is a little complicated for this example but you get the general idea..

   1. $x = "cat dog house"; # 3 words
   2. $x =~ /^\s*(\w+)\s+(\w+)\s+(\w+)\s*$/; # matches,
   3. # $1 = 'cat'
   4. # $2 = 'dog'
   5. # $3 = 'house'
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