Probably so, but why was the enclosing block exited? Keep in mind the block enclosing the regexp is NOT the curlies, it's a larger one that includes the whole for loop.

According to what you are saying, the output of the loops below should both be the same ([a][]). They should both be the same ([a][a]), but the second is producing the wrong ouput. The answer to "why do these two loops have different outputs" is answer to the OP.

print("norm: ");
for (my $i; $i ? $i<2 : 'a'=~/./g; ++$i) {
   print("[$&]");
}
print("\n");

print("next: ");
for (my $i; $i ? $i<2 : 'a'=~/./g; ++$i) {
   print("[$&]");
   next;
}
print("\n");
[download]

norm: [a][a]
next: [a][]
[download]

Update: As ikegami illustrates below, neosamurai and I were in agreement about the answer to the wrong question. It did seem a bit odd that someone as knowledgeable as brian_d_foy would be asking a question with an answer that seemed so clear to me...

My original post remains below.

neosamurai is right. $& goes out of scope when redo moves code execution back to the top of the block. redo doesn't reevaluate the loop's conditional (where we set $&), so a new value for $& is never set.

There doesn't seem to be anything special about a for loop, as the same behavior can be seen in a while loop.

for( $_ = 'fred'; print "loop\n" and s/(.)//; ) {
    print qq'I saw [$&]\n'; 
    redo if $& eq 'e';
}
__END__
loop
I saw [f]
loop
I saw [r]
loop
I saw [e]
I saw []
loop
I saw [d]
loop
[download]

$_ = 'fred'; 
while( print "loop\n" and s/(.)// ) {
    print qq'I saw [$&]\n'; 
    redo if $& eq 'e';
}
__END__
loop
I saw [f]
loop
I saw [r]
loop
I saw [e]
I saw []
loop
I saw [d]
loop
[download]

Anno