$x = "the quick brown fox\n"; $x x= 107374182; print length $x;;
2147483640                                                                  ### 8 bytes less than 2^31.

$n=0; ++$n while $x =~ m[^.*$]mg; print $n;;                                ### finds all the lines.
107374182

$x .= "the straw that broke the camel's back\n"; print length $x;;          ### Add another line that pushes the length a few bytes over 2^31
2147483678

$n=0; ++$n while $x =~ m[^.*$]mg; print $n;;                                ### and it silently fails to find any of them.
0