Another potentially confusing variation would be if list context was used since the match will return the list of matched sub-expressions. In the example below, $input is assigned a value for each iteration wheras $1 is only changed on a good match. 

#! /usr/bin/perl
use strict;

my $input;
while (<DATA>)
{
    ($input) = /(\w+)/;
    print "\$input=$input\t\$1=$1\n";
}
__DATA__
Hello

World

[download]

Output: 

$input=Hello    $1=Hello
$input= $1=Hello
$input=World    $1=World

[download]

In reply to Re: = rather than =~ ? by inman
in thread = rather than =~ ? by bcrowell2

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