Talk:234: Escape Artist

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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So, I'm curious, what is the escape character's other use that wasn't discussed in the comic? Monolith (talk) 06:51, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

They are also used to add special characters or certain instructions. For example, in LaTeX (a document typesetting system) I could type "\Omega" and in the final document the Greek letter omega will be in its place. I could also type "\newline" and the final document will have a line break at that point. In either case the backslash lets the compiler know that what follows is not to be treated as ordinary text. 108.162.250.180 08:02, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

The word "backslash" can also be meaningful in real-life escapes (assuming the escapist has a knife). Mountain Hikes (talk) 02:25, 25 September 2015 (UTC)