One thing to remember when using either substitution or match, is that the deliminator char after the "s" or "m" can be anything you want it to be. Sometimes, like below this can help with forward slash confusion.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

my $var = '<date>';
print "$var\n";

$var =~ s|date|/date|; #easier than s/date/\/date/;
print "$var\n";
__END__
Prints:
<date>
</date>
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