Further to hippo's post:

... something in the steps you are not showing us.
misterperl:   It's easy to contrive that scenario entirely separate from debug mode: 
c:\@Work\Perl\monks>perl -wMstrict -le
"$_ = '1223w3433.45+34';
 ;;
 /\d\D*/g;
 printf qq{'$&' } while /\d\D*/g;
"
'2' '2' '3w' '3' '4' '3' '3.' '4' '5+' '3' '4'

[download]
m//g in scalar or void context "remembers" the point at which a previous match ended and continues matching from that point. See pos.

Update: See what happens if the side-effect-producing, void context
    /\d\D*/g;
statement is changed to
    () = /\d\D*/g;
(i.e., if list context is imposed).

Give a man a fish:  <%-{-{-{-<

In reply to Re: Some odd ambiguity in this regex (updated) by AnomalousMonk
in thread Some odd ambiguity in this regex by misterperl

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