Hyphens aren't special outside of a character class. What makes you think they are at fault?

If your 'words' might contain punctuation, you can escape meta characters using quotemeta or synonymously \Q .. \E 

s/\b\Q$find\E\b/$replace/g

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#11929 First ask yourself `How would I do this without a computer?' Then have the computer do it the same way.

In reply to Re^7: using hashes by kennethk
in thread iterating hash keys? by R56

Title:
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