For decades I've been putting this line in my aliases file:

, return ,

This allows me to use the identifier $, in my scripts, instead of the slightly more tedious $chr(44).
The problem is I have to either convince other people to add this alias, or change all my code around.

Maybe this can be added as a convenience feature?

Most of us similarly enjoy using the elegant $(|) instead of $chr(124).

$(|) isn't elegant, it's shorter, and it's there; it's the only reason people may use it.
There is no benefit for $, even the 6 characters less don't represent a benefit.
Can you imagine if this is implemented? It would open the door for others commands and identifiers, ${, /tok for /tokenize, $ftok for $findtok, that would just be bloating.

I'm informed this breaks /var %a = $, %b = foo

If only mIRC bit the bullet and created some backwards incompatible syntax to support quoted strings (similar to bash/shell syntax). It would solve hundreds of existing language issues in addition to this one.

Maybe a "Support Quoted Strings" option could be added to opt-in to this parsing behavior.