Questions tagged [backslash]

The backslash character \ is a mirror version of the slash character /, created for use in computing. Its meaning depends on the context.

• In many languages, \ followed by a character that has a special meaning makes the next character lose its special meaning. This is especially true inside string literals string-literals and regular expressions regex: for example, in many languages, "a\\b\"" represents the 4-character string a\b".
• Sometimes \ gives the next character a special meaning. This is mostly the case when \ is followed by a letter or digit in a string literal, where it can be used to specify a control character or other special character. For example, \n specifies a newline in many languages, and \123 often specifies the character whose octal value is 123 (but note that some languages have different rules).
• In DOS dos and Windows windows, the \ character is the directory (folder) separator in file paths. For example, c:\windows\cmd.exe is the file called cmd.exe in the directory called windows at the root of the c: drive.
• In (La)TeX tex latex, \ starts a command name.
• In Haskell haskell, \ introduces a lambda expression lambda.