Well, I wanted this to be standalone but using unprintable() is attractive. Hmmm...standalone...attractive...standalone...attractive... Hard to choose now :)

It depends on what keystrokes you mean. If your user is hitting the Tab key, then you only need print whay you get. If they are using backwhack and 't', you will have to translate somehow.

You are wise to want to avoid eval of user input. How about a simple substitution?

$_ = 'Name:\tFrank\nAge:\t32';
s/\\t/\t/g;
s/\\n/\n/g;
print;
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Yeah that would work. I was wondering if I was missing a simpler option

Hmm, maybe it is easier to invert it - escape the variables, then eval:

  $string =~ s/(\\.)|([\$\@])/$2 ? "\\$2" : $1/gse;
  $new = eval qq{qq{$string}};
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I can't offhand think of any way to introduce unwanted interpolation that this doesn't cover, but you'd obviously want to think about it more carefully than I if going this route. :)

Hugo

I might be missing something?
If it's just about printing, Perl's print will DWYM as long as the string is inside double quotes "..." or qq(...)

Cheers, Sören

(I'm the original poster, BTW...forgot to log in) The string is inside a variable, having been read from the user:

$string = <>; 
print $string;
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So quotes don't help

I would believe that by mere inspection of the code, it is clear how to extend it.

BEGIN {
    use Regex::PreSuf;
    my %escape = ( "\n" => '\\n', "\t" => '\\t', "\\" => '\\\\');
    my $escape = presuf(keys %escape);
    my %unescape = reverse %escape;
    my $unescape = presuf(keys %unescape);

    sub escape {
        local $_ = shift;
        s/($escape)/$escape{$1}/go;
        $_;
    }

    sub unescape {
        local $_ = shift;
        s/($unescape)/$unescape{$1}/go;
        $_;
    }
}
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I do have some doubts on the choice of function names, though. They're not actually saying much.

p.s. You do need the latest patched version for Regex::PreSuf, as the previous version couldn't properly handle strings with embedded newlines.