No they aren't. They're mutant pseudo-scalars attached to the underlying optree, and you may well get a $1 from the last time you matched that regex. (I've got a trivial program that shows the problem with a recursive call)(His "trivial program" causes threaded Perl to core-dump.)
In reply to RE (tilly) 2: Localized Backreferences
by tilly
in thread Localized Backreferences, If Statements & Blocks
by doran
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