> perl -we'use strict;use P;      
my $re = qr{ (\w+) }x; 
my $dat = "Just another cats meow";
my @matches = $dat =~ /$re/g;
P "#matches=%s, matches=%s", scalar(@matches), \@matches;
exit scalar(@matches);'
  output:
#matches=4, matches=["Just", "another", "cats", "meow"]