I'm not disagreeing (I think), but I'm trying to get at why people reach for the more complex ones. Using m// isn't by itself complex and is usually one of the first Way Cool Perl features taught to newbies, and people can easily think that they understand the basic regex components (like $1 or /i or $^ or .*) that they've read about or seen used in tutorials. If you're saying that people use it just to make themselves look 'leet, I don't want to discount that, but it's more than just that -- there are reasons for thinking and choosing certain things, that has to do with the way the language is structured, or in how the language is learned.

-- Frag.

P.S. I'm confused on the problem with /(.*)/ -- do you mean /"(.*)"/? How can copying an entire string into $1 break? (Although it is certainly dumb.)