I use the encode-decode technique given by Roberto Ierusalimschy in Programming in Lua, 20.4 – Tricks of the Trade. The book is freely available on the net. Here are the functions (translated from lua to perl):

{
    my $re = qr/\\(.)/;
    sub encode ($) {
        my $str = $_[0];
        $str =~ s/$re/{ sprintf '\\%03d', ord($1) }/ge;
        return $str
    }
}

{
    my $re = qr/\\(\d{3})/;
    sub decode ($) {
        my $str = $_[0];
        $str =~ s/$re/{ '\\' . chr($1) }/ge;
        return $str
    }
}
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For example, after this line

my @splitted = map { decode $_ } split ',', encode('hel\,lo,world')
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@splitted becomes ('hel\,lo', 'world'). I believe this is the most universal and easy to use technique. Cheers