in reply to substitution problem with ()

The first argument of the substitution operator (s///) is a regexp, not arbitrary text. An easy way to convert arbitrary text into a regular expressions in to use quotemeta. 

my $from_re = quotemeta($_);
s/$from_re/$to/;

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Re^2: substitution problem with ()
by bart (Canon) on Jun 12, 2007 at 17:01 UTC
    Or, in one go (and IMO simpler): 
    s/\Q$from_re/$to/;

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    "\Q$string" is the same as quotemeta($string), both in a doublequotish string and in a regexp.

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