Here's what I found at https://perldoc.perl.org/perlvar.html:
$\ The output record separator for the print operator. If defined, this value is printed after the last of print's arguments. Default is undef.
You cannot call output_record_separator() on a handle, only as a static method. See IO::Handle.
Mnemonic: you set $\ instead of adding "\n" at the end of the print. Also, it's just like $/ , but it's what you get "back" from Perl.
example:
$\ = "\n";
print "a newline will be appended to the end of this line automatically";