# q/STRING/ # 'STRING' A single-quoted, literal string. A backslash represents a backslash unless followed by the delimiter or another backslash, in which case the delimiter or backslash is interpolated. $foo = q!I said, "You said, 'She said it.'"!; $bar = q('This is it.'); $baz = '\n'; # a two-character string qw/STRING/ Evaluates to a list of the words extracted out of STRING, using embedded whitespace as the word delimiters. It can be understood as being roughly equivalent to: split(' ', q/STRING/); the differences being that it generates a real list at compile time, and in scalar context it returns the last element in the list. So this expression: qw(foo bar baz) is semantically equivalent to the list: 'foo', 'bar', 'baz'