It's not that I thought it only worked on the string '0019'. When I had first typed you code and did:

foreach (@splat) { print $_, "\n" }
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I only saw 1234 printed, so I figured you then wrote the int '0019' because @splat = $thing =~ m/\d{4}/g; only sets the first one. However, I did it again, I really don't know what I changed, but it worked this time.

Thanks. And sorry for the confusion.