regex: finding something followed explicitly by a dot

[rmexico]

i'm parsing files and trying to find a given variable followed by a dot. so, the file that i'm parsing is this:

package blah.blah.blah;

import blah.Log;


    public void addLeadType(LEAD_TYPE type) {
        _leadTypes.add(type);
    }


    // ** PROTECTED METHODS     
    // ** PRIVATE METHODS     
    // ** ACCESSORS 
    // ** INNER CLASSES 
}

and the perl code that i'm using to find a word in that file:

#!/usr/bin/perl
undef $/;
sub fileContainsWord() {
    my $file = $_[0];
    my $word = $_[1];
    my $found = 0;

    open FILE, "<$file";
    while(<FILE>) {
        my $filecontents = $_;
        if($filecontents =~ /$word/smg) {
            $found = 1;
            last;
        }
        
    }
    close FILE;
    return $found;
}
my $file = "SearchSet.java";
my $word = "LEAD_TYPE.";
my $flag = &fileContainsWord($file, $word);
print $flag . "\n";

for some reason, it's not picking up the trailing dot in $word, and flag is coming back '1' why is this?