Aye, this does make it more clear, although I already understood what you meant in the end.

The problem of course was your extra backslashes in the original string confused your intent.

$_ = 'Goodbye\; Good luck\, and thanks for all the fish!\\n\\n';
[download]

Being synonymous with and more simply stated as

$_ = 'Goodbye\; Good luck\, and thanks for all the fish!\n\n';
[download]

I certainly understand your beef with evaling, but given you know the content of the eval to a certainty, I don't believe there is any security risk. Would be interested if proven wrong there though.