[...] Perl single quotes do not interpolate their contents, unlike the double quotes [...]

One fine point to add is that the delimiting character needs to be escaped in single quotes and the backslash itself will be escaped if there are two in a row.

use warnings;
use strict;

#my $y1 = ' \';  ## error
my $y1 = ' \\';  ## produces ' \'
#my $y2 = q{\};  ## error
my $y2 = q{ \\}; ## produces ' \'
my $y3 = q{\\share\dir\\}; ## produces '\share\dir\'
my $y4 = ' \'';  ## produces " '"
my $y5 = q{ \}};  ## produces ' }'

print "y1<$y1>\n";
print "y2<$y2>\n";
print "y3<$y3>\n";
print "y4<$y4>\n";
print "y5<$y5>\n";

__DATA__
y1< \>
y2< \>
y3<\share\dir\>
y4< '>
y5< }>
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