t/hl_mod.t | 4 ++++

diff --git a/t/hl_mod.t b/t/hl_mod.t
index 84a4b5766873ba733041c87819450bbfa9dc3fc5..fc7b712cea6945a4031274e63d0c05c6ed669e16 100644
--- a/t/hl_mod.t
+++ b/t/hl_mod.t
@@ -30,6 +30,10 @@ 	if (eval { require IPC::Run } && which('w3m')) {
 		require File::Temp;
 		my $cmd = [ qw(w3m -T text/html -dump -config /dev/null) ];
 		my ($out, $err) = ('', '');
+
+		# workaround https://bugs.debian.org/927409
+		$$ref =~ s/'/'/sg;
+
 		IPC::Run::run($cmd, \('<pre>'.$$ref.'</pre>'), \$out, \$err);
 		# expand tabs and normalize whitespace,
 		# w3m doesn't preserve tabs