use HTML::Entities;

# $text is some Text from a mysql database

my $sep = decode_entities('✶');
my @v = ($text =~ /\{$sep(.*?)$sep\}/sg); # alle Verweise
# @v contains all patterns (which means that they match)

##</code><code>##

$b = "Adjektive (Nominalflexion)~87";
$c = "\{$sep$b$sep\}";
$r = "<div>some Text $b some other text</div>";
$text =~ s/$c/$r/s;