$fruit="apples pears peaches plums"; $fruit =~ /(.*)\s(.*)\s(.*)/; print "$1\n"; print "$2\n"; print "$3\n"; print "-" x 30, "\n"; $fruit="apples books"; $fruit =~ /(.*?)\s(.*?)\s(.*?)\s/; # Turn off greedy quantifier print "$1\n"; print "$2\n"; print "$3\n";