backslash behaviour changed?

[Andrew Fitzgibbon]

I thought backslash was supposed to behave as a literal 
character?  It doesn't in a document I am writing, and the
documentation doesn't say how to insert one, it simply
says, under @math, that it behaves as a literal.

Can someone enlighten me or suggest a fix?

A.

Steps to reproduce:

$ uname -a
CYGWIN_NT-5.0 TAMORA 1.3.3(0.46/3/2) 2001-09-12 23:54 i686 unknown
$ 
$ cat > file.texi
\input texinfo
TEXT
@bye
^D

$ tex file.texi 
This is TeX, Version 3.14159 (MiKTeX 2.1)
(file.texi (texinfo.tex Loading texinfo [version 2003-04-28.10]: Basics,
pdf,
fonts, page headings, tables, conditionals, indexing, sectioning, toc,
environments, defuns, macros, cross references,
(C:\texmf\tex\generic\dvips\epsf.tex) localization,
and turning on texinfo input format.) [1] )
Output written on file.dvi (1 page, 200 bytes).
Transcript written on file.log.

$ cat > file.texi
\input texinfo
\
@bye
^D

$ tex file.texi 
This is TeX, Version 3.14159 (MiKTeX 2.1)
(file.texi (texinfo.tex Loading texinfo [version 2003-04-28.10]: Basics,
pdf,
fonts, page headings, tables, conditionals, indexing, sectioning, toc,
environments, defuns, macros, cross references,
(C:\texmf\tex\generic\dvips\epsf.tex) localization,
and turning on texinfo input format.)
! Use of \ doesn't match its definition.
l.2 \
     
? q