One is a match and the other is a count - you can tell that from the different ways you have constructed the regex. By choosing a confusing value to test against makes this less obvious. Instead try with "2":

$ perl -MData::Dumper -e 'print Dumper("2" =~ /2/);'
$VAR1 = 1;
$ perl -MData::Dumper -e 'print Dumper("2" =~ /(2)/);'
$VAR1 = '2';

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In reply to Re^3: How can I test for the representation of an integer? by hippo
in thread How can I test for the representation of an integer? by sm@sh

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