perl -lwe '$v = qq( $]); $v =~ s/ /v/; print $v'
v5.012004
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See? Space works on the match side.
map{substr$_->[0],$_->[1]||0,1}[\*||{},3],[[]],[ref qr-1,-,-1],[{}],[sub{}^*ARGV,3]

Maybe the context affects it? Command line operation different? In any case, I wasted three+ hours today because I'd neglected to replace a space character with a "\s" in one of my matches. It was just a space, too...not a tab, return, or anything else. It was an HTML tag of the form <span class=" body"> and I had only put the \s in one of the two spaces....ooops. Three hours for a space. It really doesn't help to have folk like yourself tell me that it wasn't supposed to happen that way. Ha. So, can you tell me why perl is so fickle?

And, no, I'm not planning to upgrade it. Too much work and too much risk with all I've got going.

EDIT: I just realized what it must have been. I just re-read your earlier post, and you mentioned "without the /x"...well, I would have been using the /x. That must have been the crucial bit here.

Blessings,

~Polyglot~