See RE: Re: ^x* vs x*$ for a previous discussion of this.

I'd vote for this behavior to change in Perl 6 such that adjacent matches must not end at the same point (they already aren't allowed to start at the same point).

Introducing such an improvement in Perl 5 will be harder due to backward compatability, but I wouldn't mind seeing that happen. I just haven't come up with a good design for how to make the new behavior optional.

        - tye