Escape Sequence

Let’s take a scenario where we need to print "Hello" in first line and "World" in the next line.

Example

Hello

World

#include<stdio.h>

int main()
{
    printf("Hello");
    printf("World");

    return 0;
}

Do you think the above program will print our expected output? No, it will print HelloWorld in the same line as an output.

So, how to deal with it. This kind of situation we should go for the escape sequence.

Like below,

#include<stdio.h>

int main()
{
    printf("Hello\nWorld");
    return 0;
}

What is escape sequence?

Example

While printing some statement, if you want to give horizontal tab (usually four spaces) in between every word like below,

#include<stdio.h>

int main()
{
    printf("Happy    New    Year");
    return 0;
}

Here, we manually gave four space between each word. This can be achieved easily with \t escape sequence.

Like below,

#include<stdio.h>

int main()
{
    printf("Happy\tNew\tYear");
    return 0;
}

Useful Escape Sequences

Useful Resources