The parens are being interpreted as special chars inside the regex. Use the quotemeta operator to escape them, and they'll retain their literal meaning. 
$line =~ s/\Q$var//;

[download]
As in: 
#!/usr/bin/perl -wT
use strict;

my $var = 'apple (banana) cherry';
my $line = 'apple (banana) cherry kiwi lemon melon';
$line =~ s/\Q$var//;

print "$line\n";

=output
 kiwi lemon melon

[download]

-Blake

In reply to Re: newbie quoting question by blakem
in thread newbie quoting question by Anonymous Monk

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
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