The idiom of that function is

{
    my %subs = (
        '\\'  => q/\\5c/,
        '('  => q/\\28/,
        ')'  => q/\\29/,
        '&'  => q/\\26/,
        '|'  => q/\\7c/,
        '>'  => q/\\3e/,
        '<'  => q/\\3c/,
        '~'  => q/\\7e/,
        '*'  => q/\\2a/,
    );
    my $subs_re = join '|', map quotemeta, key %subs;
    sub cleanLDAPString
    {
        my $tempstr = shift;
        $tempstr =~ s/($subs_re)/$subs{$1}/g;
        return $tempstr;
    }
}
[download]

But it already exists http://search.cpan.org/grep?cpanid=MARSCHAP&release=perl-ldap-0.44&string=escape&i=1&n=1&C=0 in Net::LDAP::Util

escape_filter_value ( VALUES )
unescape_filter_value ( VALUES )
escape_dn_value ( VALUES )
unescape_dn_value ( VALUES )