It would probably be useful to print out $hostName before you use it. Your double backslash on the command line ("foo.pl \\hostname") may be converted to a single backslash when Perl gets it, but I'm guessing that it's getting converted in the backticks. You can escape them before it gets there like so: 

$hostName =~ s/\\/\\\\/g;

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Update: Thanks to ikegami for pointing out that my speculation was off the mark. DOS does not mangle backslashes on the command line. I thought it might, so I suggested printing out the variable to be sure. I'd have checked this myself, but I don't have Perl on Windows to try.

In reply to Re: Backslashes in command arguements by kyle
in thread Backslashes in command arguements by tygur

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