You're first regex works fine for including a return character in a character class, you simply didn't have any return characters in your string. It helps if you print out your string that you're matching before and after you make changes to it:

$_ = "Goodbye\\; Good luck\\, and thanks for all the fish!\\\n\\\n";

print "<$_>\n";

s/\\([;,\n])/$+/g;            # Does work

print "<$_>\n";
[download]

However, it's also possible that you meant the string to be as it was, in which case maybe you're wanting to reeval that string and therefore turn the escaped characters into their corresponding code like the following:

$_ = "Goodbye\\; Good luck\\, and thanks for all the fish!\\n\\n";

print qq{<$_>\n};

s/(\\.)/qq{"$1"}/eeg;

print qq{<$_>\n};
[download]

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