Re^2: Syntax Perl Version support $c = () = $a =~ /\./g

and I believe 4.x did as well

No, it didn't and doesn't yet without patches ;-)

perl 4 patchlevel 36:

qwurx [shmem] ~> perl4 -e '$s="3.4.5";$r=()=$s=~/\./g;print$r,"\n"'
Illegal item (LEXPR) as lvalue in file /tmp/perl-eEdymqE at line 1, ne
+xt 2 tokens "/\./g;"
Execution of /tmp/perl-eEdymqE aborted due to compilation errors.
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However, chaining assignments and evaluating ARRAY in scalar context did:

qwurx [shmem] ~> perl4 -e '$s="3.4.5";$r=@r=$s=~/\./g;print$r,"\n"'
2
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Applying semantics of ARRAY to LEXPR (list expression) happened in perl5.

perl -le'print map{pack c,($-++?1:13)+ord}split//,ESEL'

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