Couldn't make directory c\\:\\xtrafiles c\\:\\xtrafiles #### use strict; my @extrafiles = ("blah.txt","wah.txt"); &moveextrafiles(quotemeta("c:\extrafiles"),@extrafiles); exit; sub moveextrafiles { my ($dirname,@filestomove) = @_; # change \ to \\ e.g. c:\extrafiles to c:\\extrafiles $dirname =~ s#\\#\\\\#g; print "$dirname\n"; mkdir $dirname,0777 or die "Couldn't make directory $dirname\n"; # Dir created. Now move files. # print join("\n",@filestomove); }