perlvar does mention the issue, but it also says this has been fully fixed since v5.20.
Edit: so this would mean that you might still get the same relative positions for the different versions on older version of perls, because although $& would be significantly worse than the other solutions on their own, it would actually lower the performances of all other versions when used in the benchmark.
In reply to Re^3: substrings that consist of repeating characters
by Eily
in thread substrings that consist of repeating characters
by Anonymous Monk
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