What is an escape sequence (escape character)?

An escape sequence is a special character string that controls character output, such as character color change, cursor movement, and character deletion, when outputting characters on the screen, rather than outputting the characters themselves.

In addition to the information that people can recognize as “character”, information other than “characters” such as control characters and character editing information on the OS is also included a s character information used in the OS. These characters are sometimes called “special characters”. An escape sequence exists for this special character to let people enter characters and tell it to the OS.

Typical escape sequences include the following characters.

\a : bell character(alert)
\b : return one character
\f : page feed(clear)
\n : line feed, return
\r : back to the beginning of the same line
\t : horizontal tab
\v : vertical tab
\\ : show \
\' : single quotation mark
\" : double quotation mark
\0 : null