missing last character in perl regex

Question

(log doggies) (log needs)

^\\(log (.*)[^)]\\)\\s*\\(log (.*)[^)]\\)$

It works with the exception of missing character at the end \"s\" as:

Answer 1

It looks like your .* should be [^)]*, i.e. *any number of characters that are not closing parentheses. Giving

^\(log ([^)]*)\)\s*\(log ([^)]*)\)$

Or you could fetch all instances of (log xxx) with

while ( $s =~ /\(log ([^)]*)\)/g ) {
    print $1, "\n";
}

Answer 2

^\(log (.*)\)\s*\(log (.*)\)$

You don't need to negate the ).

Answer 3

The [^)] eats your s-es. Why do you need it?

my $s = '(log doggies) (log needs)';
say for $s =~ /^\(log (.*)\)\s*\(log (.*)\)$/;

Output:

doggies
needs