Escape character

Character used to indicate that what follows is special

An escape character is a character which invokes an alternative interpretation on subsequent characters in a character sequence. An escape character is a particular case of metacharacter.

Usage

Escape characters are used in computer programming and data processing to signify that the characters following it should be treated differently. For example, in many programming languages, the backslash (`\`) is used as an escape character. This allows for the inclusion of special characters in strings, such as newline (`\n`), tab (`\t`), or even the backslash itself (`\\`).

Common Escape Characters

Some of the most common escape characters include:

• `\n` - Newline
• `\t` - Tab
• `\\` - Backslash
• `\"` - Double quote