If the intent was to capture all of the matches, then you'd have to 1) capture them, which would involve, 2) using that construct in a list context.

As it is used, it is in a scalar (Boolean) context which means that whether there is one match or 20 doesn't make a difference and so the /g modifier doesn't add any value. That is why the /g modifier in a scalar context does something different. It just returns the next match.

Now if you replace if with while, then the /g would make sense as a way to have the body of the while loop deal with (the text captured by the parens) one match at a time.

If you have more questions on this, please at least include more code. (:

        - tye (but my friends call me "Tye")