mikeraz@tire:~$ cat tpl
#!/usr/bin/perl

$criteria = "(abc|123)\$";
$teststring = "Foo walks up and says: abc";

if ( $teststring =~ /$criteria/ ) {
      print "it worked!\n";
      } else {
      print "uh no, it did not\n";
      }
mikeraz@tire:~$ ./tpl
it worked!
mikeraz@tire:~$