Adding to liz' (completely correct) comment: The parens are RegEx metacharachters used for grouping and capturing. For example, $string = 'Hi there (Mark)'; m/^<[^>]+>$string<\/[^>]+>$/; would be exactly the same as m/^<[^>]+>Hi there (Mark)<\/[^>]+>$/;, which matches "Hi there Mark" between tags and captures the "Mark" part of it. quotemeta(...) and its RegEx equivalent m/\Q...\E/ (quote ... end) escape all the RegEx metacharachters properly (i.e. (Mark) to \(Mark\)).
And that's about it.
Hope this helped.
CombatSquirrel.

In reply to Re: Regex Problem by CombatSquirrel
in thread Regex Problem by ido50

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