based on our chatterbox discussion, you could do something along the lines of...

#!/usr/local/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use diagnostics;
$|++;

my $string = 'test $token1$ $lc_token1$ $token2$ $lc_token2$ end_test'
+;
my $w = '$';
my $token;

for( qw/ token1 token2 / )
{
    $token = quotemeta $w . $_ . $w;
    $string =~ s/$token/replace1/g;
    $token = quotemeta $w . 'lc_' . $_ . $w;
    $string =~ s/$token/replace2/g;

}
print $string, "\n";
[download]

~Particle