Ruby - What does this code do?

Question

l = 'abcde'
puts l =~ /ab?/

Answer 1

It looks for the pattern "a" or "ab" and returns the index where it begins in the string.

(puts l =~ /e/) returns 4
a b c d e
0 1 2 3 4

Answer 2

is comparing l with regex isnt it?
ab? means ab occurence is 0 or more