in reply to What does a failed regular expression match actually return?

In scalar context? A false scalar.

In list context? Nothing. It returns zero scalars.

a => 'a' =~ m/b/, b => 'asdf'
is just a fancy way of writing
'a', 'a' =~ m/b/, 'b', 'asdf'

The expression within the hash constructor ({}) is evaluated in list context. Since the above list was evaluated in list context, it's individual elements were evaluated in list context. On a failed match, the above is therefore equivalent to

'a', 'b', 'asdf'

Solutions:

a => scalar( 'a' =~ m/b/ ), b => 'asdf'
a => !!( 'a' =~ m/b/ ), b => 'asdf'
a => 'a' =~ m/b/ ? 1 : 0, b => 'asdf'