MarkM has directly answered your question, but I thought it might be handy to point out that m/// m// in list context returns all the subexpressions matched in parens. I think this would be useful in your example code. e.g.:

my ($perm, $inode, $owner, $group, $size, $month, $day,
    $yearOrTime, $name) = m!$re_with_capturing_parens! or next;
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Note: the or next at the end of this satisfies the recommendation to skip any lines that don't match.

Update: make that m// instead of m/// :-)