in reply to Re^2: When exactly do Perl regex's require a full match on a string?
in thread When exactly do Perl regex's require a full match on a string?

As the examples below show, absent the m modifier, '$' does not match an internal new line, but it is perfectly happy matching a final newline after an internal newline:

Therein may lie your problem.   A newline is a character and  $ is a zero-width assertion which will never match a character.    :-)