Don’t confuse yourself. foreach puts its expression into list context, so a /g match actually returns a list of all matches at once; of course the foreach then iterates over them one by one. The loop construct you want is while, which evaluates its condition in scalar context, so a /g match as the condition will return matches one by one.

Makeshifts last the longest.

Thanks for making this clear. Is there a way to get all those /g matches at once without a loop?
OK just found it:

use warnings; use strict;
my $x = "aiutino aiutino argh! aiutino";
my @matches = $x =~ / \b aiutino \b /gix;
print "$_\n" for @matches;
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so it is depending on scalar vs. list context what you will get.
Thanks again,
jonix

Huh?!?

I think you misunderstood me! I do use very often the /g modifier in list context:

my $n =()= / \b aiutino \b /gix;
warn "Argh, $n times";
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warn "$_ => Argh!\n" for / \b aiutino \b /gix;
# Ok: not that interesting with a fixed lenght string!
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Update: in the code above I did s/smart/interesting/, as per Aristotle's remark: indeed the latter adjective better reflects my feeling - I meant that $_ saves me some typing but will always have the value 'aiutino', and it would be more interesting with a more complex regex. Well, thinking of it better, not quite always 'aiutino', because I used /i, but still there ought to be more interesting cases...

not that smart with a fixed lenght string!

Why not? Firstly, you’re using \b, which condition you’d have to code manually if you were to use a string search – that would require a lot of extra code and would be slower. Secondly, the regex engine is smart enough to do a simple string search itself when it sees simple patterns like yours.

So absolutely, you should use a pattern for the job you’re after.

Makeshifts last the longest.