Yes, there are many special variables whose name is one punctuation character, including the scalar variable > (written $> ) and the scalar variable ? (is it written $? ). They are described in perldoc perlvar .
$> is an effective user id. This is “magical” in that the EUID will change its destination (if allowed).
$? contains the status of the last external call of the process. This is a little magical (for example, you can assign integers to it), but basically it has several built-in constructions (for example, reverse images, i.e. `foo` ).