Actually while $ does usually have a special meaning, Perl seems to try to do the Right Thing:

print 'aha' if('ab$de' =~ /$/);
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works (it does find the '$' character - actually it DOES NOT, see below). However,

print 'aha' if('ab$de' =~ /b$/);
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is looking for a 'b' at the end of the string, and

print 'aha' if('ab$de' =~ /$d/);
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is looking for the contents of $d anywhere in the string, which it does find as $d is empty.

Personally I'd consider index for a simple string search like this one.

Update: D'oh! Yes pfaut, that makes a LOT more sense. That should teach me something...

print 'aha' if('' =~ /$/);
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prints 'aha' because even an empty string has an end...

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I'd like to be able to assign to an luser