String and character literals provide an escape mechanism that allows express character codes that would otherwise not be allowed in the literal. An escape sequence consists of a backslash character (\) followed by one or more other characters. The same sequences are valid in both character and string literals.
The complete set of escape sequences is as follows:
Escape sequence meaning:
\\ Denotes a backslash (\) character
\' Denotes a single-quote (') character
\" Denotes a double-quote (") character
\n Denotes a line feed (LF) character
\r Denotes a carriage return (CR) character
\t Denotes a horizontal tab (HT) character
\f Denotes a form feed (FF) character
\b Denotes a backspace (BS) character
\<octal> Denotes a character code in the range 0 to 255.
The <octal> in the above consists of one, two or three octal digits ('0' through '7') which represent a number between 0 and 255 (decimal).