What is an escape character in Java?

Answer 1

The escape character, the back slash: \, is the character that signals the following character is not what it normally means, i.e. as a reserved symbol, or as a new symbol.

The uses of the escape character include:

In Strings when " or ' is a required part of the string

String example1 = "She said,"Hello""; //the escape sequence signifies the " is actually //a " not the end of the String literal.

In Formatting Strings

\n means new line

\t means tab

i.e.

System.out.println("Hello\nHow are you?\tFine thank you.");

// Prints

// Hello

// How are you? [tab] Fine thank you.

And of course the really idiosyncratic one:

When the back slash is essential to a string, and you don't want it to be a escape character:

\\ means \

i.e.

System.out.println("\");

// Prints \

Answer 2

Escape characters in Java are used in String literals when you need to enter something like a quotation mark, a slash, or a line return.

Java escape characters start with the backslash ( \ ). The escape character for the backslash (so your String will have a backslash in it) is simply "\".

If you put a " in your string, make sure that you remember that this will not close the String declaration, and will insert a quotation mark at that point.

To put a newline in a String, put \n. The text following it will be on a new line if it is displayed.

For example,

String newLine = "This is one\\a line\nThis is a "second" line";

System.out.println(newLine);

will output

This is one\a line

This is a "second" line