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;
[download]

so it is depending on scalar vs. list context what you will get.
Thanks again,
jonix