escape character
nounEtymology From escape + character.
1
Communications, Computing, Electrical engineering, Engineering, Mathematics, Natural sciences, Physical sciences, Sciences, Telecommunications A single metacharacter, usually a control code, which in a sequence of characters signifies that what is to follow takes an alternative interpretation. The term escape sequence refers to the escape character and the subsequent character or characters so modified.
- In the C programming language, the backslash is an escape character; for example, \n represents a newline.