> But is there a more elegant way to do that, one that might also pick up some of the others?

yes, see quotemeta resp. \Q and \E °

demo
>perl
$v1 = "*hello";
$v2 = "*hello";
print quotemeta($v2),"\n";
print "match" if $v1 =~ /\Q$v2/;
__END__
\*hello
match
>

[download]

Cheers Rolf
(addicted to the Perl Programming Language :)
Wikisyntax for the Monastery

°) also perlre#Quoting-metacharacters

In reply to Re: regex matching on metacharacters by LanX
in thread regex matching on metacharacters by slugger415

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