echo `expr match "$string" 'abcA-Z*.2'`

You're using backticks, which is causing perl to call a shell. expr is a shell function, not a perl function. You'll want to run 'man expr' on your system to get the documentation for that command.

update:For some reason my brain wasn't working this morning -- you're calling echo, which isn't a perl command, either. I have a feeling that your whole thing is shell, not Perl.