I agree that it is at first glance, it appears odd that '\\foo' and '\foo' are equivalent. But this is a necessary exception if we want single quoted strings to be able to contain any character without special jury rigging.

It's not that hard to remember that if you use q{}, that you can escape [\{}] in the string, or if you use '', you can escape [\']. The fact that heredocs don't require you to escape the 'HEREDOC' should be fairly obvious I believe.

I'm therefore for maintaining the status quo, although I do appreciate the discussion.