Regex comparison

regextest.pl

#!/usr/bin/env perl

use strict;
use warnings;

#my $text = "\t \t";
#my $text = "\t\t \t";
#my $text = "\t\t \t\t \t";
my $text = "\t\t \t\t      \t";

my $text2 = $text;


$text2 =~ s{(.*?)\t}{$1.(' ' x (4 - length($1) % 4))}ge;

print length($text2);

$text2 =~ $text;

$text2 =~  s/(.*?)\t/'    '/;

print length($text2);