/pat/g means /(pat)/g if pat contains no captures. In list context, m// returns what it captured (or 1 if there are no captures) on success. 

$ perl -wle'print for "aabbaab" =~ /((.)\2+)/sg;'
aa
a
bb
b
aa
a

[download]
$ perl -wle'print $1 while "aabbaab" =~ /((.)\2+)/sg;'
aa
bb
aa

[download]

Note that if "aabbaab" =~ /aa|bb/g is wrong. Red flags should be raised when you see /g in scalar context outside a loop.

In reply to Re^5: Regex for matching n-fold repititions of arbitrary characters by ikegami
in thread Regex for matching n-fold repititions of arbitrary characters by pat_mc

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