Look at quotemeta, and its twin brother, \Q, in perlre. Like Grandfather said, 
$text =~ /\Q$search/

[download]
is indeed one way to use it properly.

Another, more primitive way to achieve the same effect is to precede every \W character with a backslash. That is actually exactly what quotemeta does. 

$search =~ s/(\W)/\\$1/g;  # same as:  $search = quotemeta($search);
$text =~ /$search/    # no "\Q" tis time!

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In reply to Re: How to disable Pattern Matching ? by bart
in thread How to disable Pattern Matching ? by Coppiete

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