Ok, what am I missing here....

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

for ('#abc',' abc','abc','# abc',' #abc') {
  my $v1 = ($_ !~ /^#\s/ and $_ !~ /^\s/) || 0;  # yours
  my $v2 = ($_ !~ /^#?\s/) || 0;                 # mine
  print "$v1 $v2 '$_'\n";
}
[download]

Output:

1 1 '#abc'
0 0 ' abc'
1 1 'abc'
0 0 '# abc'
0 0 ' #abc'
[download]

-Blake