Question: This is what I'm doing

```
a = "%span.rockets#diamonds.ribbons.forever"
a = a.match(/(^\%\w+)([\.|\#]\w+)+/)
puts a.inspect

```

This is what I get

```
#<MatchData "%span.rockets#diamonds.ribbons.forever" 1:"%span" 2:".forever">

```

This is what I want

```
#<MatchData "%span.rockets#diamonds.ribbons.forever" 1:"%span" 2:".rockets" 3:".#diamonds" 4:".ribbons" 5:".forever">

```

help? I tried and failed :(

Answer: 
Generally, you can't get an arbitrary number of capturing groups, but if you use `scan` you can get a *match* for every token you want to capture:

```
a = "%span.rockets#diamonds.ribbons.forever"
a = a.scan(/^%\w+|\G[.|#]\w+/)
puts a.inspect

["%span", ".rockets", "#diamonds", ".ribbons", ".forever"]

```

This isn't too different from your regex, but I removed repetition on the last token. `\G` isn't too well known - it tells the engine to match where the previous match ended, so it doesn't break when you have extra characters between matches (`%span :P .rockets`).

Generally, if you had multiple matches of your original regex this method may add some work, because you don't have the groups separated to matches, but since `match` returns a single result it should work fine.

Working example: <http://ideone.com/nnmki>
That's just how capturing groups work. If you want to save all of those substrings, put the quantifier *inside* the capturing group:

```
a = a.match(/(^%\w+)((?:[.#]\w+)+)/)

```

Then your second capture will be:

```
2:".rockets#diamonds.ribbons.forever"

```

...and you can break it down the rest of the way yourself.