I know the quotes work because I tested them before posting.

Really? So did I and it did not work. The "stronger reason" is that most people forget that double qoutes interpolate and the forward slashes do not. See for yourself.

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
no warnings 'uninitialized'; # prevents a warning on line 8
my $description = "Some descriptive text here^`my_username";
my ($desc, $username) = split("\^`", $description);
print "desc: $desc\n";
print "username: $username\n";
($desc, $username) = split(/\^`/, $description);
print "desc: $desc\n";
print "username: $username\n";
($desc, $username) = split("\\^`", $description);
print "desc: $desc\n";
print "username: $username\n";
__DATA__
desc: Some descriptive text here^`my_username
username:
desc: Some descriptive text here
username: my_username
desc: Some descriptive text here
username: my_username
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