I don't know about clear it up, but it looks to me that the text and the behavior do not match. The text more clearly describes what happens in quoted strings, not what happens in single quoted strings as this example shows:

print '\ \\ \\\ \\\\ \\\\\ ';
print "\n";
print "\ \\ \\\ \\\\ \\\\\ ";
print "\n";
[download]

result:

\ \ \\ \\ \\\ 
 \ \ \\ \\
[download]

As you can see in the quoted string "\ " displays a space while in the single quotes it displays itself. Thus the backslash does not appear to always be an exception to the every char stands for itself rule. What it stands for appears to depend on what follows it. And sometimes it appears to stand for itself.

perl, v5.8.1-RC3 built for darwin-thread-multi-2level

---

---

Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!

Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.

Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.

Please read these before you post! —

• How do I compose an effective node title?
• How do I post a question effectively?
• Markup in the Monastery

Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:

a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr

You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)

	For:		Use:
	&		&
	<		&lt;
	>		&gt;
	[		&#91;
	]		&#93;

Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?

See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.