I would go for readability instead.

my $fixed = $ptext;
$fixed =~ s/^['"]//;
$fixed =~ s/['"]\z//;
$fixed = quotemeta($fixed);
[download]

That's probably useless since your list of meta characters differs from quotemeta's. If so, then you can use:

my $fixed = $ptext;
$fixed =~ s/^['"]//;
$fixed =~ s/['"]\z//;
$fixed =~ s/([\\'"...])/\\$1/g;
[download]