You escaped the backslash: that worked fine. What you didn't do was escape the single quotes. 

#!/usr/bin/env perl

use strict;
use warnings;

my $cmd = "printf \'I\\x27ll\'";
print $cmd . "\n";
print `$cmd` ."\n";

[download]

Output:

$ pm_sh_escape.pl
printf 'I\x27ll'
I'll

[download]

Update: Escaping the single quotes was not the answer - see discussion below.

-- Ken

In reply to Re: backslashes in shell commands by kcott
in thread backslashes in shell commands by Anonymous Monk

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