$ cat data.pl 'asdasd', "'asdasd", '\'asdasd', "\\'asdasd", '\\\'asdasd', $ perl -MData::Dumper -e 'print Dumper [do "data.pl"]' $VAR1 = [ 'asdasd', '\'asdasd', '\'asdasd', '\\\'asdasd', '\\\'asdasd' ];