Good point. I've just tried 2 backslashes and then 4, and get almost the same result. A $wmiFileSecSetting object in each case but Data::Dumper shows it in two different ways. 2 backslashes - 'Path' => '\\\\PCCS023\\root\\cimv2:Win32_LogicalFileSecuritySetting.Path="d:\\\\programming"' 4 backslashes: 'Path' => '\\\\PCCS023\\root\\cimv2:Win32_LogicalFileSecuritySetting.Path="d:\\\\\\\\programming"'