Here is the "canonical" way of counting matches into a scalar: 
~$ perl -e 'my $x=()="Twinkle twinkle little star"=~/twinkle/ig; print
+ qq|$x\n|'
2

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Note the use of () as an intermediate to switch between scalar and list contexts.
I Sympathize because I too had trouble wrapping my head around this.

             All great truths begin as blasphemies.
                   ― George Bernard Shaw, writer, Nobel laureate (1856-1950)

In reply to Re: Error in my Regular expression pattern by NetWallah
in thread Error in my Regular expression pattern by shajiindia

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