Escape sequences in C

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In the C programming language, an escape sequence is specially delimited text in a character or string literal that represents one or more other characters to the compiler. It allows a programmer to specify characters that are otherwise difficult or impossible to specify in a literal.

An escape sequence starts with a backslash (\) called the escape character and subsequent characters define the meaning of the escape sequence. For example, \n denotes a newline character.

The same or similar escape sequences are used in other, related languages such C++, C#, Java and PHP.