Wrong chars in regular expressions

[EinfachToll]

Although I could not figure out where, if ever, this causes a problem, the following lines (lines 129ff. in plugin/AutoClose.vim) seem not to work:

if b:AutoCloseSmartQuote != 0
     let l:regex = q . '[ˆ\\' . q . ']*(\\.[ˆ\\' . q . ']*)*' . q
else
     let l:regex = q . '[ˆ' . q . ']*' . q
endif

The ˆ are most likely supposed to be a ^
But I don't really get the meaning of the first regular expression anyway...