in reply to Problem with \\

<crystal-ball mode=on>Most probably Data::Dumper is the wrong way to get at the data. This module tend to escape various "special" characters so as to enable it to later reconstitute the original data.

A single "\" gets encoded or escaped as a double "\\" and therefore your challenge string unexpectedly has grown to be 9 characters long.<crystal-ball mode=off>

use strict;
use warnings;
use Data::Dumper;
my $test = '123\456';
print Dumper($test);

[download]
Output is 
$VAR1 = '123\\456'

[download]

CountZero

A program should be light and agile, its subroutines connected like a string of pearls. The spirit and intent of the program should be retained throughout. There should be neither too little or too much, neither needless loops nor useless variables, neither lack of structure nor overwhelming rigidity." - The Tao of Programming, 4.1 - Geoffrey James

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom