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Escape Sequence Characters

Escape sequence characters are special characters that we can use inside strings to perform actions like adding a new line or a tab.

Common Escape Sequences​

  • New Line (\n): Moves the text following it to a new line.
  • Tab (\t): Adds a horizontal tab (usually 4 spaces) to the text.
  • Backslash (\\): allows us to include a literal backslash in our string.
  • Single/Double Quote (\' or \"): lets us include quotes within a string of the same type.
# New Line example
print("Hello\nWorld")

# Tab example
print("Item 1\tItem 2\tItem 3")

# Quote example
print('It\'s a beautiful day!')
Hello
World
Item 1	Item 2	Item 3
It's a beautiful day!

Why They Are Useful​

Escape sequences are especially helpful when we need to format long strings or include characters that normally have a special meaning in Python code.