OK, that seems clear hdp, but I'm confused by the following snippet (using \t instead of \a for visibility) in which perlfunc:quotemeta appears to behave differently than /Q/E: 
$foo = "\tfoo";
$_ = ">>ha<<\n";  s/ha/$foo/;      print;
$_ = ">>ha<<\n";  s/ha/\Q$foo\E/;  print;
quotemeta $foo;  # update: this is doing nothing!
$_ = ">>ha<<\n";  s/ha/$foo/;      print;

$foo = '\tfoo';
$_ = ">>ha<<\n";  s/ha/$foo/;      print;
$_ = ">>ha<<\n";  s/ha/\Q$foo\E/;  print;
quotemeta $foo;  # update: this is doing nothing!
$_ = ">>ha<<\n";  s/ha/$foo/;      print;

[download]
which produces: 
>>      foo<<
>>\     foo<<
>>      foo<<
>>\tfoo<<
>>\\tfoo<<
>>\tfoo<<

[download]
What am I forgetting here?

Update Aarghhh! How bloody embarrassing! Thanks tye, that's what I get for minimizing my keystrokes!
Useless use of quotemeta in void context at D:\Perl\tmp\quotemeta.pl line 9.
Useless use of quotemeta in void context at D:\Perl\tmp\quotemeta.pl line 15.
/me smacks himself in the forehead

--
I'd like to be able to assign to an luser

In reply to \Q and \E vs. quotemeta? by Albannach
in thread Guess I don't have \Q and \E figured out yet... by Guildenstern

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