Escape Sequences 🪜

Escape sequences are a special sequence of characters beginning with \ that represent a single character. They are often used to write out untypeable characters, such as new lines, tabs, or double-quotation marks inside of a string.

Here’s a list of common escape sequences:

Escape Sequence	Inserted Character	Description
\n	Inserts a newline.	This escape sequence is needed because you can’t just hit enter to get a newline — that would break C’s syntax.
\t	Inserts a tab.	This escape sequence is needed because often you can’t just hit tab to get a tab character — that would break C’s syntax.
\%	Inserts a % character.	This escape sequence is needed when writing format strings, because format specifiers start with %. (ie. %d, %s)
\'	Inserts a ' (single-quote).	This escape sequence is needed when writing the single-quote character, as characters are surrounded by single-quotes. (ie. ‘a’, ‘b’, ‘\’’)
\"	Inserts a " (double-quote).	This escape sequence is needed when using double-quotes inside of a string, because strings are surrounded by double-quotes. (ie. “This is an \”apple\”.”);
\\	Inserts a \ (backslash).	This sequence is needed because the start of every escape sequence is a backslash.

Ex.

// Escape characters are needed here because double quotes are
// already used to denote the start and end of a string.
printf("My name is \"Bob\"");

// Add a tab between "I am" and " spaced out!"
printf("I am \t spaced out!");

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Tasks 🎯

Add a tab between “apple” and “banana” in print statement for the code below.

You should get the output:

apple   banana

#include <stdio.h>

int main() {
    printf("apple banana");
}

Solution ✅

#include <stdio.h>

int main() {
    printf("apples\tbananas");
}

Add a newline between the two sentences that are printed in code below.

You should get the output:

Hello there!
The weather's looking fine today.

#include <stdio.h>

int main() {
    printf("Hello there! The weather's looking fine today.");
}

Solution ✅

#include <stdio.h>

int main() {
    printf("Hello there!\nThe weather's looking fine today.");
}