By the way, you probably should not be doing it at all. eval has teeth: $strvar = "test text \@{[ `rm -rf /' ]) # sic"; for contrived example. There is almost guaranteed to be a better/safer way to do whatever you want. Check what Fletch said about the e flag to start with. If that doesn't cover your needs, probably should ask about the problem you're trying to solve and not just the code that won't work.