Does it _need_ to be one regex? You might be better of checking the length first? Something like this...?

UPDATE: See replies.... 

if (length($name) <= 20 and $name =~ m/^\w+\s(\w+\s)?\w+$/i) {
    print "okay\n";
}

[download]

By the way, your character restriction doesn't work because you can match up to three characters in one go within the parentheses, so your upper limit here is actually 60.

---
my name's not Keith, and I'm not reasonable.

In reply to Re: Stumped by regex by reasonablekeith
in thread Stumped by regex by brickwall

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