Dear monks,
a really simple RegEx problem is driving me crazy trying to find the most-often recurring char combination:

perl -le 'print $x = "abcdefgxxabcdefgzzabcdsjfhkdfab"; print $2 if $x
+ =~ /((\w+).*?\2.*?)+/;'
abcdefgxxabcdefgzzabcdsjfhkdfab
ab
[download]

Simple, but I need to match only strings with a minimum of 2 chars:

perl -le 'print $x = "abcdefgxxabcdefgzzabcdsjfhkdfab"; print $2 if $x
+ =~ /((\w{2,}).*?\2.*?)+/;'
abcdefgxxabcdefgzzabcdsjfhkdfab
abcdefg
[download]

Shows abcdefg but ab would be right (there is another abc behind the zz and another ab at the end).

perl -le 'print $x = "abcdefgxxabcdefgzzabcdsjfhkdfab"; print $2 if $x
+ =~ /((\w{2,}?).*?\2.*?)+/;'
abcdefgxxabcdefgzzabcdsjfhkdfab
cd
[download]

doesn't work either, as ab would be right.
Why doesn't {2,} match ab?
Thanks, Sewi