I can't tell you with absolute certainty that Perl regexen don't use \< and \> (even though some others do, according to Friedl, Master Regular Expressions, p131) but if you substitute \b -- which Perl does recognize, your script works. 
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;

#885479

my $string = " cat mat rat pat\n"; 
if ($string =~ /\bcat/) {
     print "yes\n"; 
     } else {
     print "no\n"; 
}

[download]

Note also the omission of your exit 0; and substitution of use warnings (scoped to the current script whereas  - w may kick out warnings about any modules you might use in some more complex program.

However, for future posts, please enclose code (and data) in <c>...</c> tags. See Markup in the Monastery.

Updated with MRE citation.

In reply to Re: regex start of word (\<) by ww
in thread regex start of word (\<) by dipali

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.