escape character

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escape character

Wikipedia

From escape +‎ character.

escape character (plural escape characters)

1. (computing, 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.