The Importance of Backward Slashes in Python and How to Use Them

In Python, the backslash (\) character is used for several purposes, such as:

  • To specify escape sequences, like \n for a new line, \t for a tab, etc.
  • To escape special characters - the backward slash is used to escape special characters such as quotation marks and newline characters in strings. For example:
# escaping special characters in a string

my_string = "This is a string with a \"quotation mark\" and a newline character \n in it"
print(my_string)
  • Split a string into multiple lines using the \ character at the end of each line. For example, the following code will print hello world on two lines:
# continuing a line of code

print("This is a very long line of code that cannot fit on one line" \
      "so we are using the backward slash to continue it on the next line")

It’s important to note that in Python, the backslash character is used for escaping characters, and it is not the same as the forward-slash (/) character, which is used for division. For example, the following code will print 5.0:

print(10 / 2)

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