One thing I don't get is that while I seem to still have access to individual lines the $ char in a regex doesn't do what I expect it to.

open ( $fh, "< $path_to_file");
binmode($fh);
my @log = <$fh>;
my $line;
while ($line = pop @log) {
    last if ($line =~ /^.*\ -\ line I'm looking for$/);
}
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had to become:

    last if ($line =~ /^.*\ -\ line I'm looking for/);
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