well i don't know what is causing your error, (it seems to work for me, 5.6.1 on linux), but you don't need to escape those unless you want literal \'s in your file. in that case you need to escape the \'s: 
$i = "\\<HTML\\>\n";

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In reply to Re: Why do I need a space here? by robobunny
in thread Why do I need a space here? by pogo

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