Is a variable's value a literal in regex replace?

Question

$boo = "Dog."
If I search for $boo in a string, does the dot become a metacharacter or just a normal dot character?

Ok thanks... could I do a \Q$boo\E to make it's value a literal?

Answer 1

Variables are expanded to be part of the regex string, therefore the dot will be treated as a meta character (ie a single wildcard character).