Split a windows path?

the problem is that when you are constructing the string, "C:\Documents and Settings\user\Desktop\screenshot.jpg", it renders the backslashes as escape characters.  When you use this in a real application it wont be an issue, but since you're constructing the string for test purposes, you either need to escape the backslashes, or use single quotes.

"C:\\Documents and Settings\\user\\Desktop\\screenshot.jpg".split('\\')
or
'C:\Documents and Settings\user\Desktop\screenshot.jpg'.split('\\')

Many thanks all. Tis working now, just one problem left to solve! (Which I may end up asking in this groovy forum sooner or later).

I'm coming back to the described issue for Windows paths.
I can't figure out  where is the problem when executing 2 almost identical code blocks, - the first works without problems:

#encoding: utf-8
require 'spreadsheet'

folder = "\\\\Server100\\Folder1\\Folder2\\Folder3"
file = folder << "\\" << "olé-ole-file.xls"
Spreadsheet.client_encoding = 'UTF-8'
Spreadsheet.open(file) do |book|
  puts "sheets: #{book.worksheets.size}"
  sheet = book.worksheet(0)      
  puts "First sheet name: #{sheet.name}"
end

The second - not at all:

#encoding: utf-8
require 'spreadsheet'

folder = "\\\\Server100\\Folder1\\Folder2\\Folder3"
pattern = ""olé-ole-file*.xls""
Dir.chdir(folder)      
source_files = Dir.glob(pattern) 
recent_file = source_files.max_by { |f1| File.mtime(f1) }
file = folder << "\\" << recent_file
Spreadsheet.client_encoding = 'UTF-8'
Spreadsheet.open(file) do |book|
  puts "sheets: #{book.worksheets.size}"
  sheet = book.worksheet(0)      
  puts "First sheet name: #{sheet.name}"
end

What's wrong here? The error I get is the following:

It happened on Windows XP SP3 box, Ruby 1.9.3, spreadsheet 0.6.8.
Thank you.