Written by the Fiveable Content Team • Last updated September 2025
Verified for the 2026 exam
Verified for the 2026 exam•Written by the Fiveable Content Team • Last updated September 2025
Definition
Escape characters are special characters that are used to represent certain actions or non-printable characters within a string. They are preceded by a backslash (\) and allow you to include characters like quotes, newlines, or tabs in your strings.
Related terms
String literals: A sequence of characters enclosed in double quotes ("") or single quotes ('').
Backslash (\): An escape character used to indicate the start of an escape sequence.
Newline character (\n): An escape sequence that represents a line break in a string.