suhailck:

That may not be (see "Update") what OP sought: "for each special character in..." a string of special chars (only) .

Emphasis supplied.

Update Oops. Apologies to suhailck!

I missed the fact that the title explicitly allows for a "mixture" (and relied on OP's narrative and example). Hence, suhailck's reply is arguably better than the next, since the second, among other things, will convert #$%^ to #0\^ and escape the spaces, if a string of "words" is inserted in the $var

my $var="!@#$%^&(),.Now is the time}{[]+-";
print "\n$var";
my $var_with_slash=quotemeta($var);
print"\n$var_with_slash";

[download]

outputs:

!@#0^&(),.Now is the time}{[]+-
\!\@\#0\^\&\(\)\,\.Now\ is\ the\ time\}\{\[\]\+\-

[download]

In reply to Re^2: how insert back slash to a string that has only special characters or mixture of both by ww
in thread unable to differentiate last word and intermediate word in a sentence by suniln

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