and mine doesn't

#!perl -w
print '\'
__END__
Can't find string terminator "'" anywhere before EOF at C:\test.pl lin
+e3
[download]

...because it thinks I'm trying to escape a single quote. So, single quotes obviously do some sort of backslash interpolation. Your original point was that he didn't have to escape the \ in "c:\path\to\something". I think of it this way: nothing interpolates within single quotes, including escape sequences. If you do something like $string = 'some string\t\n', the result will interpolate to the right thing in double quotes. Now, that having been said, one can embolden perldata another way:

String literals are usually delimited by either single or double quotes. They work much like quotes in the standard Unix shells: double-quoted string literals are subject to backslash and variable substitution; single-quoted strings are not (except for "\'" and "\\")

I concede that I was mistaken. My apologies.

thor