as there's no code to look at...i guess you need to more carefully quote the variables to do with this challenge, so the two forward slashes are not evaluated by perl to be a matching call, or a (string) meta-character, or other perl interpretation. if this is the case then the appropriate quoting mechanism should help. Please note that your question title is about backslashes, and description is about forward slashes. i tried to cover both, and until otherwise convinced, i think they cause similar (quoting) problem.