Interesting... Did you add the /g to the close of the match, too?

That while doesn't look like it will work without it...

$ perl -e'$_="abcabcdabc";while(/(?g)(a[^a]+)/){print "$1\n"}'
abc
abcd
abc
[download]

Cool, with 5.6.1, ?g did "the right thing".

I guess it was disallowed as a local modifier in 5.8.0 because it doesn't make sense to apply it to just part of the regex?
--
Mike