look at the part of the perlre man page that describes the use of \Q and \E flags within the regex: 
my $seek = '@#]$%(*&Y^%';

my $test = 'This is a test to look for @#]$%(*&Y^% in text data';

print "found it\n" if ( $test =~ /\Q$seek\E/ );

[download]

Update: I realized I answered only part of your question. It looks like you can minimize the regex and substitution to just this: 

s/(STARTDATE &) (STARTTIME)/$1 " " & $2/;

[download]
But if that pattern occurs next to things other than "utime(", and you need to restrict the pattern more carefully, then you need to handle the parens -- a couple ways come to mind: 
# don't try to match the paren explicitly -- use "." instead:

s/(utime.STARTDATE &) (STARTTIME)/$1 " " & $2/;

# or match it explicity, with an escape:

s/(utime\(STARTDATE &) (STARTTIME)/$1 " " & $2/;

[download]
In any case, don't bother making the regex match string any longer than it needs to be.

In reply to Re: matching the line which has special characters in it by graff
in thread matching the line which has special characters in it by greatshots

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