Well, the simplest solution is to provide a literal tab character (rather than two characters: backslash and t). Alternatively, you can try to make a tab out of backslash-t with eval. 
use strict;
use warnings;

my $t = '\\t';
print "$t:\n";

my $evaled = eval "qq/$t/";
print "$evaled:\n"

[download]
Result: 
\t:
    :

[download]

(perlmonks changes literal tab to several spaces, heh)

Than again, maybe eval is more trouble than it's worth. I'd say a hash with all separators that you want to use would work better: 
my %seps = (
  '\\t' => "\t",
  '\\n' => "\n",
   # etc
);

my $input = <>;
my $separator = $seps{$input};

[download]

In reply to Re: input special characters by Anonymous Monk
in thread input special characters by kepler

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