A single backslash "\" in mel (and in many other programming languases) is considered as an escape character. It has a special meaning. Here are some examples \n - means carriage return \t - means tab you can also use it to print special characters. an example: Code: print ("Maya says "hi" to all"); // Output: // Error: Syntax error // So how do you print quotation marks? Simple: Code: print ("Maya says \"hi\" to all"); Notice the backslashes before the " chars inside the string to be printed. So if the backslash plus the next character isn't a recognized "escape pattern", maya simply prints the next character as is. This is why: Code: print ("C:\documents and Settings\chris\mayascripts\GIJoe.lights"); // Outputs as: // C:documents and SettingschrismayascriptsGIJoe.lights So to print the path with backslashes you would write: Code: print ("C:\\Documents and Settings\\chris\\mayascripts\\GIJoe.lights"); // Output: // C:\Documents and Settings\chris\mayascripts\GIJoe.lights Try what this does in the script editor: Code: print ("\nIt is a good habbit to start a line with a \"\\n\" because\nthe previous line didn't necessarily end with one.\n\n This line starts here with a space.\n\t\"This line is in quotation marks and starts with a tab.\"");