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/ );
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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/;
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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/;
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In any case, don't bother making the regex match string any longer than it needs to be.