I'm confused about the behavior of the special match variables  ${^PREMATCH} ${^MATCH} ${^POSTMATCH} (see perlvar) in relation to the /p regex modifier, all available in 5.10+. (Note that these are not, AFAIU, the same as the  $PREMATCH $MATCH $POSTMATCH variables (again, perlvar), which are just the  use English; equivalents of the  $` $& $' variables, the notorious '$& and friends'.)

The documentation leads me to believe that  ${^MATCH} et al are only valid after a match that uses the /p regex modifier, but the code below produces the same output with or without the /p modifier. What gives? 

>perl -wMstrict -le
"my $s = '----abc123++++';
 $s =~ m{ ([[:alpha:]]+) (\d+) }xms;
 print qq{'${^PREMATCH}' '${^MATCH}' '${^POSTMATCH}' ($1) ($2)};
"
'----' 'abc123' '++++' (abc) (123)

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In reply to ${^MATCH} regex special variable(s) and /p regex modifier by AnomalousMonk

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