>perl -wMstrict -le "my $s = 'xxx fooooo yyy'; ;; $s =~ m{ (x+) .*? (?fo+) .*? (y+) }xms; ;; print qq{'$1' '$+{FOO}' '$3'}; print qq{'$1' '$2' '$3'}; print qq{/fo+/ at $-[2] to $+[2]}; " 'xxx' 'fooooo' 'yyy' 'xxx' 'fooooo' 'yyy' /fo+/ at 4 to 10