Backslash substitution

Backslash substitution is performed whenever the interpreter comes across a backslash. The backslash is an escape character and when it is encountered is causes the interpreter to handle the next characters specially. Commonly escaped characters are \a for audible bell, \b for backspace, \f for form feed, \n for newline, \r for carriage return, \t for horizontal tab, and \v for vertical tab. Double-backslash, \\, is substituted with a single backslash. Other special backslash substitutions have the following forms:

• \ooo
  • the digits ooo give the octal value of the escaped character
• \xHH
  • the x denotes that the following hexadecimal digits are the value of the escaped character

Any other character that is backslash escaped is simply substituted by the character itself. For example, \W is replaced by W.