So ... $_ in the for loop, and $y are references

Not exactly, $_ is an alias to the elements being looped over, not a reference (which would need to be dereferenced), see the first few paragraphs of Foreach Loops. Some more fun with aliases, note how the magic substr lvalue remembers its bounds in the string:

our ($x,$y) = "Hello, World!";
*y = \substr $x, 7, 5;  # alias via glob

$y = "substring";
print "<$x>\n";  # prints <Hello, substring!>

$y = "Perl";
print "<$x>\n";  # prints <Hello, Perl!>

$x = "Magic, cool stuff!";
print "<$y>\n";  # prints <cool>

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In reply to Re^6: regex syntax and idomatic Perl by haukex
in thread regex syntax and idomatic Perl by cbeckley

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