Escape Characters

Special Characters in Strings

Sometimes you need characters that you can't just type — like a line break in the middle of a string, or a tab for indentation. Python uses escape sequences starting with a backslash

\\

\\n

"Line 1\\nLine 2"

\\t

"Name:\\tAlice"

\\\\"

"She said \\\\"Hi\\\\""

\\\\'

'It\\\\'s fine'

\\\\\\\\

"C:\\\\Users"

print("First\nSecond")    # Two lines
print("Name:\tAlice")      # Tab-indented

💡

💡 The

\\n

(newline) is by far the most commonly used escape character. You'll see it everywhere in Python!