I meant "capturing parentheses". Or "explicit capturing". Sorry for the imprecision.

You're not saving anything by using $&, and you end up slowing all non-capturing regexps in that interpreter instance.

<rant with="perl" not="you">
You're right, of course. It's just so annoying to have this technical inconvenience. If I match something it is quite probable that I may want to do something with it. Hence the need for a pronoun without the need to say "hey, capture it all for me". Different story for $` and $', obviously.
</rant>