ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Escape sequence

When we want to say something special in a sentence or code, we use an escape sequence. It's like a magic code that helps the computer understand what we really mean.

For example, let's say we want to add a quotation mark in our sentence, but we don't want the computer to think that's the end of the sentence. We can use the escape sequence of a backslash (\) before the quotation mark. This tells the computer that the quotation mark is part of the sentence and not the end of it.

In simple terms, an escape sequence is like a secret code that helps the computer to understand what we mean when we want to use special symbols or characters in our sentences or code.