Consider the following program which just does a regex on two array entries: 

@files=("zzz.21.yy.ccc", "zzz.220.ccc" );

foreach $name (@files)
  {
  chomp $name;
    $match="no ";
    $match="yes" if ( $name =~ /(^[a-z]{3})\.(\d{2,3})\..*\.ccc/) ;
    print "$match, $name, match1: $1, match2: $2\n";
  }

[download]

When I run this on Linux perl 5.8.8 $2 does not seem correct for the second name:

The second name should have the same values since the regex match fails the second time, but $2 mysteriously takes "21." from the first entry. Can this be a problem with perl 5.8.8?

See below: 

perl issueWithRegex.pl 
yes, zzz.21.yy.ccc, match1: zzz, match2: 21
no , zzz.220.ccc, match1: zzz, match2: 21.

[download]

With perl 5.10.1 this seems to run as I would expect it to: 

perl issueWithRegex.pl
yes, zzz.21.yy.ccc, match1: zzz, match2: 21
no , zzz.220.ccc, match1: zzz, match2: 21

[download]

Thanks for any comments.

In reply to curious regex result for perl 5.8.8 by erodrig

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