In the line you are doing the assignment:

$c->{Anchor}{to}='$3 |$2| *$1*';
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You are using single quotes. If you use double quotes:

$c->{Anchor}{to}="$3 |$2| *$1*";
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then it should be properly interpolated. Barring that, you can also use eval (as noted above) to interpolate the string.