use strict; my $foo = 123.45; my $bar = "Martha Stewedprune"; ### --------------------------- print q^ ===== This is an example of text taken literally except that variables are expanded where their variable names appear. foo: ^.$foo.q^ bar: ^.$bar.q^ (Our *uninterpolated* variable names are "$foo" and "$bar" ... and we didn't need escape chars to tell you that). ^; ### ---------------------------