Escape Sequences in Strings

Escape Sequences in Strings

Some characters are impossible to type as-is inside a string. Escape sequences solve that: a backslash \ followed by a letter or symbol.

The classic escapes

• \\ prints a backslash.
• \" prints a double quote.
• \n prints a newline.
• \t prints a tab.
• \0 is the null character (used by C-style strings).

In action

cout << "She said \"hi\"." << endl;
// She said "hi".

cout << "line one\nline two" << endl;
// line one
// line two

cout << "col1\tcol2" << endl;
// col1    col2

Why the backslash?

A string is bounded by double quotes. To place a real quote inside, you tell the compiler "this quote is text, not the end of the string" - that is what \" does. And because the backslash itself starts escapes, a real backslash is written as \\.

Escape table

TL;DR

• Escapes start with a backslash.
• \" puts a quote inside a string.
• \n and \t format output.
• \\ writes one backslash.
• \0 is the null character.