Perl regex match string by not consuming characters

Question

How do I extract the string in between but not consuming the characters,

The string:

abc123
def456
ghi789

I was using the regex below and it returns the string in between 123 and 789:

/123(.*?)789/s

What I want to extract is:

123
def456
ghi789

Answer 1

The capturing parens should be placed around what you want to capture, so replace

/123(.*?)789/s

with

/(123.*?789)/s

Now, 123 and 789 will be included in the captured text as requested.