Notes – Escape Sequence in C

Escape sequences are special characters used in C to represent actions like a new line, tab space, or printing special characters.

They begin with a backslash \, followed by a character that represents a specific control instruction.

These are mostly used inside character and string literals.

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Why Use Escape Sequences?

• To format output.
• To control special characters that cannot be typed directly.
• To print quotes, backslashes, etc. inside strings.

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Commonly Used Escape Sequences

Escape Sequence	Meaning	Example	Output Description
\n	New line	printf("Hello\nWorld");	Prints “Hello”, then “World” on the next line
\t	Horizontal tab	printf("Name\tAge");	Inserts a tab between “Name” and “Age”
\\	Backslash	printf("C:\\Files");	Prints a single backslash \
\'	Single quote	printf("It\'s done");	Prints single quote '
\"	Double quote	printf("She said \"Hi\"");	Prints double quotes inside text
\r	Carriage return (rarely used)	Moves cursor to beginning of line (used in console apps)
\b	Backspace	printf("A\bB");	Removes previous character
\a	Alert (beep sound)	printf("\a");	Triggers system beep (if supported)
\0	Null character (end of string)	Used to terminate strings

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Example Code

#include <stdio.h>

int main() {
    printf("Line1\nLine2\n");
    printf("Tab\tSpace\n");
    printf("Path: C:\\Program Files\\\n");
    printf("Quote: \"Hello World\"\n");
    return 0;
}