So I guess you want the count rather than the match (since you didn't specify). In that case, just force scalar context:

$ perl -MData::Dumper -e 'print Dumper(scalar ("2" =~ /(2)/));'
$VAR1 = 1;
[download]

Update: As per haukex's correction the scalar context simply forces true/false rather than the count of matches. The above strategy still applies if this (whether the regex is a match or not) is all that you really want to test.