>perl -wMstrict -le
"my $s = '----abc123++++';
 $s =~ m{ ([[:alpha:]]+) (\d+) }xms;
 print qq{'${^PREMATCH}' '${^MATCH}' '${^POSTMATCH}' ($1) ($2)};
"
'----' 'abc123' '++++' (abc) (123)