The fix I implemented used quotemeta. I suspect something like this might suffice for your needs: my $dsn = "dbi:SQLite:\Q$path";

Did you try it? Because it makes no difference, it simply can't

The problem relates to the backslashes in the MSWin path which, somewhere in the DBI code, get interpreted as escapes.

No. DBI project doesn't have that problem. It would be extremely serious case of stupid.

DBI::Shell on the other hand does use eval stupidly, but it hasn't been touched in 10 years, has https://rt.cpan.org/Public/Dist/Display.html?Name=DBI-Shell}19 open tickets... and is not part of DBI project.

I didn't delve into to any great depth

Does that make you a troll?