Escape character
A backslash is a punctuation character commonly used in programming and text syntaxes to introduce an escape sequence or alter the interpretation of a following character.
The Quick Python Book, Fourth Edition
A backslash is the character used in Python string literals and regular-expression patterns to introduce escape sequences or special interpretations.
- How it is used
- Uses backslashes to encode special characters, continue statements, and express literal backslashes in regular-expression patterns.
- How deep it goes
- Explains common escapes, quoting alternatives, line-continuation pitfalls, and two-stage regular-expression parsing without covering raw-string syntax in detail.
- Examples
- Demonstrates newline, tab, quote, literal-backslash, multiline-string, continued-statement, and re.compile examples.
- What you can do after
- Apply escape sequences in Python strings and construct literal-backslash patterns with re.compile.
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100 Java Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
A backslash is an escape character used by Java string literals and by regular-expression syntax to alter the interpretation of the following character.
- How it is used
- Prevents incorrect Java strings and regular-expression patterns caused by confusing literal backslashes with escape sequences.
- How deep it goes
- Explains Java escaping, regex re-interpretation, accepted versus rejected sequences, and safer path construction, but not compiler internals.
- Examples
- Uses Windows path strings, word-boundary replacements, whitespace splitting, Path.of construction, and IntelliJ IDEA highlighting.
- What you can do after
- Apply it by escaping literal backslashes, checking both Java and regex parsing, and constructing paths with Path.of.
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Learn PowerShell in a Month of Lunches: Fourth Edition, Covers Windows, Linux, and macOS
A backslash is the regular-expression character used to escape characters with special meaning or represent a literal backslash.
- How it is used
- Uses escaping to match punctuation literally while parsing text with regular expressions.
- How deep it goes
- Defines escaping and demonstrates periods and backslashes, while stopping short of broader regex implementation details.
- Examples
- Demonstrates matching a literal period and matching a literal backslash.
- What you can do after
- Apply it via regular expressions to match characters that would otherwise act as syntax.
Related concepts
- escape sequenceused by · An escape sequence is source notation, typically using an escape marker, that represents a character or control value or changes how characters are interpreted.
- regular expressionused by · A formal pattern notation that describes sets of strings and enables text to be matched, searched, extracted, or transformed.
- stringuses · A string is a programming-language value representing an ordered sequence of characters or character units as text.
- metacharacterimplements · A regular-expression metacharacter is a character with special syntactic or matching meaning rather than a purely literal meaning.
- raw string literalalternative to · A raw string literal is a string-literal syntax that treats most backslashes and other contents literally, reducing ordinary escape processing.
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