perlquestion nicemank <p> I want to extract sequences of words according to how many characters in each word.</p> <p>So I want to extract for instance a sequence based on the number of characters (here defined as letters of the alphabet - not punctuation, numbers, white space). </p> <p>For instance: I want sequences of 2, 4 and 3 character words - in that order only (but it could be any numbers of characters in any order I choose).</p> <p>Say my text is: "xxxx yy zzzzz xxxx qqq" </p> <p>I should extract the sequence: "yy xxxx qqq"</p> <p>and keep on doing it. So from "xxxx yy zzzzz xxxx qqq xxxx yy zzzzz xxxx qqq"</p> <p> I should extract</p> <p>"yy xxxx qqq yy xxxx qqq" </p> <code> my $string = "xxxx yy zzzzz xxxx qqq"; my @array = ( $string =~ /(\b..?\b) (\b....?\b) (\b...?\b)/sg ); print @array; # produces nothing. # I have also tried rewriting it without success: it may # produce results, but not the right ones! (not the exact # sequence) # also if the string were longer it should produce # the sequence repeated: # "xxxx yy zzzzz xxxx qqq xxxx yy zzzzz xxxx qqq" # should produce "yy xxxx qqq yy xxxx qqq" etc etc # until we run out of text.</code> <p> I have also tried running adaptions of remiah's code, but without success: http://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=996670. The problem/task differs and I cannot adapt the code to it. Inability! nicemank thanks in advance!