Definition
Escape characters are part of the syntax for many programming languages, data formats and communication protocols. For a given alphabet an escape character's purpose is to start character sequences (so named escape sequences) which have to be interpreted differently from the same characters occurring alone. An escape character may not have its own meaning, so all escape sequences are of 2 or more characters.
There are usually two functions of escape sequences. The first is to encode a syntactic entity, such as device commands or special data which cannot be directly represented by the alphabet. The second use, referred to as character quoting, is to represent characters which cannot be typed in current context, or would have an undesired interpretation. In the latter case an escape sequence is a digraph consisting of an escape character itself and a "quoted" character.
Read more about this topic: Escape Character
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