Can anyone please explain to me what the first regular expression test will match, but the second one won't?

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

my $a = 'abc == 123';
if ($a =~ /^(.*?)==(.*)$/) {
   print "This will match\n";
   print "First: $1\nLast: $2\n";
}
if ($a =~ /^(.*?)\b==\b(.*)$/) {
   print "This will not match\n";
   print "First: $1\nLast: $2\n";
}

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I need to use the non-greedy match in the first part of the expression becuase I need to find the first occurrence of the '=='.

In reply to Regular Expression Question by VingInMedina

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