Unfortunately, from exists in perlfunc:
Be aware that calling exists on array values is deprecated and likely 
+to be removed in a future version of Perl.

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Not sure what you mean by "last", that exits a block. Maybe you were thinking of first in List::Util?
my $retn = first {m/aa/} @a;

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But that is not using the smart-match operator (~~ not =~)

In reply to Re^2: smart match capture by cdarke
in thread smart match capture by perlperlperl

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