Actually while $ does usually have a special meaning, Perl seems to try to do the Right Thing:
print 'aha' if('ab$de' =~ /$/);
works (it does find the '$' character - actually it DOES NOT, see
below). However,
print 'aha' if('ab$de' =~ /b$/);
is looking for a 'b' at the end of the string, and
print 'aha' if('ab$de' =~ /$d/);
is looking for the contents of $d anywhere in the string, which it does find as $d is empty.
Personally I'd consider index for a simple string search like this one.
Update: D'oh! Yes pfaut, that makes a LOT more sense. That should teach me something...
print 'aha' if('' =~ /$/);
prints 'aha' because even an empty string has an end...
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I'd like to be able to assign to an luser