Probably so, but why was the enclosing block exited? Keep in mind the block enclosing the regexp is NOT the curlies, it's a larger one that includes the whole for loop.

According to what you are saying, the output of the loops below should both be the same ([a][]). They should both be the same ([a][a]), but the second is producing the wrong ouput. The answer to "why do these two loops have different outputs" is answer to the OP.

print("norm: ");
for (my $i; $i ? $i<2 : 'a'=~/./g; ++$i) {
   print("[$&]");
}
print("\n");

print("next: ");
for (my $i; $i ? $i<2 : 'a'=~/./g; ++$i) {
   print("[$&]");
   next;
}
print("\n");
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norm: [a][a]
next: [a][]
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