I know that thats i even tried matching by setting

use strict;

my $var1 = "a+b";
my $var2 = "a\+b";
if ($var1 =~ /$var2/) {
    print "hey it matches \n";
}

print "hey here  \n";
[download]

but it doesn't work. AGAIN the only thing that works is

$var2 = "a\\+b";
[download]

please explain Waris