Why am I not surprised that the PERL part could be solved with bash in the same space. Why are you so eager to use lang on top of lang, in such simple cases?
/podcast/with/nasty'--c h a r$/and/stuff/track1.mp3track1.mp3
$ path="/podcast/with/nasty'--c h a r$/and/stuff/track1.mp3"
$ echo "${path##*/}"
track1.mp3
$ basename "${path}"
track1.mp3
$ echo "${path}" | awk -F/ '{print $NF}'
track1.mp3 $ i="/podcast/with/nasty'--c h a r$/and/stuff/track1.mp3"
$ echo "${i##*/}"
track1.mp3
$ function remove_longest_matching_prefix () { echo "${1##$2}"; }
$ remove_longest_matching_prefix "$i" '*/'
track1.mp3
echo “${uglypath:t}”