perl -we 'use strict; use P; my $filelist=q{C:\Users\cign\Desktop\printFile.txt}; P "opening file: %s", $filelist;' opening file: C:\Users\cign\Desktop\printFile.txt ## #alternate ways ## > perl -we 'use strict; use P; my $filelist='\''C:\Users\cign\Desktop\printFile.txt'\''; P "opening file: %s", $filelist;' opening file: C:\Users\cign\Desktop\printFile.txt ## > perl -we 'use strict; use P; my $filelist="C:\\Users\\cign\\Desktop\\printFile.txt"; P "opening file: %s", $filelist;' opening file: C:\Users\cign\Desktop\printFile.txt ### ## my favorite (in a file)... #! perl/bin/perl.exe use strict; use P; my $filelist="C:/Users/../tmp/../Perl64/printFile.txt"; P "opening file: %s", $filelist; open (test, ">", $filelist) or die "didn't work"; print test "Hello World!\n"; close test; C:\Perl64>perl test.pl opening file: C:/Users/../tmp/../Perl64/printFile.txt C:\Perl64>type printFile.txt Hello World!