This patch enables the standard warning for 8, 9, _ as well as letters: Unrecognized escape \9 passed through at -e line 1. Hugo --- toke.c.old Tue Mar 21 05:30:21 2000 +++ toke.c Sat Apr 29 19:11:16 2000 @@ -1377,7 +1377,7 @@ default: { dTHR; - if (ckWARN(WARN_MISC) && isALPHA(*s)) + if (ckWARN(WARN_MISC) && isALNUM(*s)) Perl_warner(aTHX_ WARN_MISC, "Unrecognized escape \\%c passed through", *s);