G'day MattLG,

qr{...} does not return a string! See perlop - Regexp Quote-Like Operators for a description of what it does return. Here's an example:

$ perl -Mstrict -Mwarnings -E '
    say q{*** Using qr{}};
    my $re = qr{^.*$};
    say ref $re;
    say $re;

    say q{*** Using q{}};
    my $str = q{^.*$};
    say ref $str;
    say $str;
'
*** Using qr{}
Regexp
(?^u:^.*$)
*** Using q{}

^.*$
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Related documentation:

• perlop - Quote and Quote-like Operators
• perlre - Modifiers
• perlre - Extended Patterns
• overload - Overloadable Operations