Something like this:

[ ~/tmp ] $ perl -wle 'use strict; { local $/ = \1; while (<>) { print
+ "Char: ", $., " is ", $_ } }'
qwerty
Char: 1 is q
Char: 2 is w
Char: 3 is e
Char: 4 is r
Char: 5 is t
Char: 6 is y
Char: 7 is 

[ ~/tmp ] $
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Update: See this excellent article which discusses the special variables used here.
Also note that the 'l' in -wle sets $\.