diff --git a/ChangeLog b/ChangeLog
index f45382ceab..d935cf567b 100644
--- a/ChangeLog
+++ b/ChangeLog
@@ -1,3 +1,9 @@
+Sun Jan 19 23:08:18 2003  Akinori MUSHA  <knu@iDaemons.org>
+
+	* lib/shellwords.rb (shellwords): A backslash ('\') in single
+	  quotes should not be regarded as meta character.  This bug or
+	  maybe feature was inherited from Perl's shellwords.pl.
+
 Sat Jan 18 14:53:49 2003  Nobuyoshi Nakada  <nobu.nokada@softhome.net>
 
 	* bignum.c (rb_cstr_to_inum): should not erase all 0s, but
diff --git a/lib/shellwords.rb b/lib/shellwords.rb
index 9fd7571172..6fb40e8a27 100644
--- a/lib/shellwords.rb
+++ b/lib/shellwords.rb
@@ -26,9 +26,8 @@ module Shellwords
 	  snippet.gsub!(/\\(.)/, '\1')
 	elsif line =~ /\A"/ then #"
 	  raise ArgumentError, "Unmatched double quote: #{line}"
-        elsif line.sub!(/\A'(([^'\\]|\\.)*)'/, '') then #'
+	elsif line.sub!(/\A'([^']*)'/, '') then #'
 	  snippet = $1
-	  snippet.gsub!(/\\(.)/, '\1')
 	elsif line =~ /\A'/ then #'
 	  raise ArgumentError, "Unmatched single quote: #{line}"
 	elsif line.sub!(/\A\\(.)/, '') then