No, a two slashes are . . . two slashes. Two backslashes make a single slash because the first escapes the later. It makes a difference which way they're pointing because they're different characters. Read the section on 'quotelike operators' in perlop. 

perl -le 'print "// \\"'

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The cake is a lie.
The cake is a lie.
The cake is a lie.

In reply to Re^4: problem opening file by Fletch
in thread problem opening file by koleti

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