(Update: Sorry for the confusion. Until Liz' update about the fact that she was talking about "m ($v) =..." in the second half of her reply, I mistook her reply to be talking about the ordinary "my ($v) = 'a';".)

Hi Liz,
I don't think "my ($v) = '';" is equivalent to "$_ =~ m/$var/ = '';" and throwing a warning.

(cmd.exe has different shell quoting!)
%perl -w -Mstrict -e "my ($v) = '';"
(no warnings)
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And thus:

%perl -w -Mstrict -e "my ($v) = 'a'; print $v;"
a
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which parses in my head as 'string is assigned to first element of the left hand side list'. I can't argue with the exact concepts applied by the interpreter because I forgot most about the weirder rules of context including lvalue stuff. But this seems to support the above:

%perl -w -Mstrict -e "my ($v,$s) = 'a'; print $v, $s;"
aUse of uninitialized value in print at -e line 1.
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Still, string being assigned to first element of the left-hand side list. Same for lists on the right-hand side. (Which would be common usage in contrast to the above weirdness.)

%perl -w -Mstrict -e "my ($v,$s) = ('a'); print $v, $s;"
aUse of uninitialized value in print at -e line 1.
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Good. As expected. Same goes for two-element lists on the rhs.

%perl -w -Mstrict -e "my ($v,$s) = ('a', 'b'); print $v, $s;"
ab
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And the ',' operator has lower precedence than '=', so we get a 'useless use of a constant' error.

%perl -w -Mstrict -e "my ($v,$s) = 'a', 'b'; print $v, $s;"
Useless use of a constant in void context at -e line 1.
aUse of uninitialized value in print at -e line 1.
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Hope this clarified things a little.