Because you are trying to match string which occurs twice and 'abcdefg' is first correct candidate. I can think only about such approach for your problem:

$ perl -le 'print $x = "abcdefgxxabcdefgzzabcdsjfhkdfab"; print $1 if 
+$x =~ /(\w{2,})(.*?\1){2}/;'
abcdefgxxabcdefgzzabcdsjfhkdfab
abcd

$ perl -le 'print $x = "abcdefgxxabcdefgzzabcdsjfhkdfab"; print $1 if 
+$x =~ /(\w{2,})(.*?\1){3}/;'
abcdefgxxabcdefgzzabcdsjfhkdfab
ab

$ perl -le 'print $x = "abcdefgxxabcdefgzzabcdsjfhkdfab"; print $1 if 
+$x =~ /(\w{2,})(.*?\1){4}/;'
abcdefgxxabcdefgzzabcdsjfhkdfab
[download]

I.e. The problem is you have to say exactly how many occurences you want (there is no 'greediness' in this case == you can't say "I want as many occurences as possible", only lowest possible number of occurences will be chosen).

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