c:\@Work\Perl\monks>perl -wMstrict -MData::Dump -le
"my $s = 'a,b,c,d,e,f';
 ;;
 my $sym = qr{ [^,] }xms;
 my $sep = qr{   ,  }xms;
 ;;
 $s =~ m{ \A $sym (?: $sep $sym){5} \z }xms or die qq{bad string: '$s'};
 ;;
 my ($u, $v, $w, $x, $y, $z) = $s =~ m{ $sym }xmsg;
 dd $u, $v, $w, $x, $y, $z;
"
("a", "b", "c", "d", "e", "f")