$ perl -Mre=debug barney Compiling REx "^barney" Final program: 1: MBOL (2) 2: EXACT (5) 5: END (0) anchored "barney" at 0 (checking anchored) anchored(MBOL) minlen 6 Guessing start of match in sv for REx "^barney" against "This is a wilma line%n barney is on this line%n ".. . Found anchored substr "barney" at offset 30... Found /^/m, restarting lookup for check-string at offset 53... Did not find anchored substr "barney"... Match rejected by optimizer Barney not found Freeing REx: "^barney"