AFAIK are here-docs the only way to avoid the need of self-escaping a \

Actually, I was not aware of this, but yeah: 

Win8 Strawberry 5.8.9.5 (32)  Sun 05/02/2021 21:06:46
C:\@Work\Perl\monks
>perl -Mstrict -Mwarnings

my $s = <<'EOT';
\b\\o\\\f\\\\f\
EOT
print "'$s' \n";

$s = q/\q\\u\\\u\\\\x\
/;
print "'$s' \n";

^Z
'\b\\o\\\f\\\\f\
'
'\q\u\\u\\x\
'

[download]
Learned something today! :)

Give a man a fish:  <%-{-{-{-<

In reply to Re^3: Regex Search String in a Variable by AnomalousMonk
in thread Regex Search String in a Variable by roho

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