Is there a simple way to quote strings in regexps so that it is not necessary to escape individual special characters? For example, if I have a fragment of code like this: 
my $string = 'Some text with $ signs in it';
my $pattern = '$ signs';

$string =~ s/$pattern/dollar signs/;
print "$string\n"

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in which $pattern could contain characters with special regexp meanings is there a way to make this work "sensibly" without using one or more previous regexps to escape all the special characters (ie in this case convert $pattern to '\$ signs').

In reply to Quoting strings in regexps by Bilbo

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