/me eats his words.

You are 100% correct. Here is an example (that I had to run to beleive it).

my $test = "Hello world!";
print "Matched\n" if $test =~ /(Hello)/;
print "\$1 = $1\n";
print "Matched\n" if $test =~ /world/;
print "\$1 = $1\n";

__DATA__
Matched
$1 = Hello
Matched
$1 =
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