use strict;
my $str = '10 x source 4 50° on booms (2 downstage left and right, 2 upstage left and right) 2x festoons (mentioned above) 4x 1kx Fresnel backlight in L712 4x SL 15/32 (3x L443, 4x R119) – all four of which are specifically focused specials 1x Edison bulb suspended from grid';
my $regex = qr/\d+\s*x\b(?:\([^()]*\)|[^()])*?(?=\d+x|$)/imp;
if ( $str =~ /$regex/g ) {
print "Whole match is ${^MATCH} and its start/end positions can be obtained via \$-[0] and \$+[0]\n";
# print "Capture Group 1 is $1 and its start/end positions can be obtained via \$-[1] and \$+[1]\n";
# print "Capture Group 2 is $2 ... and so on\n";
}
# ${^POSTMATCH} and ${^PREMATCH} are also available with the use of '/p'
# Named capture groups can be called via $+{name}
Please keep in mind that these code samples are automatically generated and are not guaranteed to work. If you find any syntax errors, feel free to submit a bug report. For a full regex reference for Perl, please visit: http://perldoc.perl.org/perlre.html