Use \Q and \E to 'quote' the string being interpolated into the search: 
  $string =~ s/\Q$token\E/$date/;

[download]
Otherwise you get a nasty message:
Invalid [] range "Y-%" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/[DATE:%Y-% <-- HERE m-%d]/

Or you could use quotemeta() on the string beforehand?

In reply to Re: regexp w/ special chars by shenme
in thread regexp w/ special chars by LanceDeeply

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