This appears to be a situation when the pattern matches a zero-length substring (see perlre, "Repeated patterns matching zero-length substring"). Using s/.+/t/g gives the expected result.

Update: Adding use re 'debug'; to the code produces some interesting output that illustrates the documented behavior. Note how it says Matching REx ".*" against "" <stuff deleted> Match successful! midway through. If I understand this correctly, that is where it matches the empty string and produces the extra 't' in the output. 

Compiling REx `.*'
size 3 Got 28 bytes for offset annotations.
first at 2
   1: STAR(3)
   2:   REG_ANY(0)
   3: END(0)
anchored(MBOL) implicit minlen 0
Offsets: [3]
        2[1] 1[1] 3[0]
Matching REx ".*" against "abc"
  Setting an EVAL scope, savestack=5
   0 <> <abc>             |  1:  STAR
                           REG_ANY can match 3 times out of 2147483647
+...
  Setting an EVAL scope, savestack=5
   3 <abc> <>             |  3:    END
Match successful!
Matching REx ".*" against ""
  Setting an EVAL scope, savestack=5
   3 <abc> <>             |  1:  STAR
                           REG_ANY can match 0 times out of 2147483647
+...
  Setting an EVAL scope, savestack=5
   3 <abc> <>             |  3:    END
Match successful!
Matching REx ".*" against ""
  Setting an EVAL scope, savestack=5
   3 <abc> <>             |  1:  STAR
                           REG_ANY can match 0 times out of 2147483647
+...
  Setting an EVAL scope, savestack=5
   3 <abc> <>             |  3:    END
Match possible, but length=0 is smaller than requested=1, failing!
                            failed...
Match failed

ttFreeing REx: `".*"'

[download]
See perldebguts for more information on interpreting this output.

In reply to Re: Incorrect pattern recognition problem. by bobf
in thread Incorrect pattern recognition problem. by b2sing4u

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