So if that's acceptable for you - use while loop to determine max amount of occurences. There will be no more than length / 2 occurences, so start with this max value and decrease it while trying to match:
$x = "abcdefgxxabcdefgzzabcdsjfhkdfab"; $len=int(length($x)/2);
while($x !~ /(\w{2,})(.*?\1){$len}/)
{ $len-- };
$x =~ /(\w{2,})(.*?\1){$len}/; # 'strange line'
print $1
(to self: do not know why I have to add 'strange line', without it nothing is printed, but $len is correctly set to 4)
I tried to generate the list and include it in one regexp:
$ perl -le '$x = "abcdefgxxabcdefgzzabcdsjfhkdfab"; $len=int(length($x
+)/2); $restring = join"|", map {"(?:.*?\\1){$_}"} reverse(1..$len); p
+rint $restring; print $1 if $x =~ /(\w{2,})($restring)/;'
(?:.*?\1){15}|(?:.*?\1){14}|(?:.*?\1){13}|(?:.*?\1){12}|(?:.*?\1){11}|
+(?:.*?\1){10}|(?:.*?\1){9}|(?:.*?\1){8}|(?:.*?\1){7}|(?:.*?\1){6}|(?:
+.*?\1){5}|(?:.*?\1){4}|(?:.*?\1){3}|(?:.*?\1){2}|(?:.*?\1){1}
abcdefg
but it does not work as expected (probably some stupid mistake, maybe someone else can tell what's wrong with it). | 