In Perl you can just use a  /as your path separator. Why? Because Perl with automagically convert the /to the correct path separator for the system it is running on!

Unfortunately this is not true for Perl on (classic) MacOS. On MacOS you can use / for manipulating @INC but not for other file pathes.
File::Spec which currently undergoes a major rewrite to handle MacPerl and VMS in a better way is for sure the way to go.
See also perlport

Hanamaki