If you are going to do that, then you need to unescape the backslashes as well! While you can do that via (something close to one of these):

s#(?<!\\)((?:\\\\)*)\\n# '\\'x(length($1)/2) . "\n" #ge;
# or
s#(?<!\\)(\\*)\1\\n#$1\n#g;
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I find that having to escape your backslashes only when they preceed a (desired) newline to be confusing so I'd go with japhy's excellent sugestion or perhaps: s#\\([\\n])# $1 eq "n" ? "\n" : $1 #ge

        - tye (but my friends call me "Tye")