Thanks for the comments. .* always sets off the alarm in my head, as it is very rarely necessary. Similarly, constructs like m/^.*blah.*$/ are overkill in many cases, and make it harder to see what's doing the real work.

I've had a look at the /aa modifiers, and I think that might make our list. And the use re '/aa' pragma might be the best way to do that for our code.