Yet another variant: 

my @elems = qw(a b c d e);

my $n = $#elems;
for my $elem (@elems) {
    print "last elem = $elem\n" if !$n--;
}

[download]

Update: as to your updated question: if you want to avoid creating a named array at any price, you could do something like this (but I'm not sure if I should seriously recommend that...) 

my $n;
for my $elem (map {$n++; $_} qw(a b c d e)) {
    print "last elem = $elem\n" if !--$n;
}

[download]

In reply to Re: Test for the last element in a foreach by almut
in thread Test for the last element in a foreach by tdevil76

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.