note ioannis The snippet bellow shows that the $l inside the embedded code of the regex is a closure. <p> <code> use Scalar::Util 'refaddr'; for my $l ('a'..'b') { print 'loop variable ', refaddr \$l; $l =~ /(?{ print refaddr(\$l) }) /x; } </code> <p> Here is the output: <code> loop variable 135603848 135606104 loop variable 135606092 135606104 </code> 554941 554941