System Feature
	Escape

Purpose
	Marks a character as a special character.

Syntax
	\<character>

Description
	The backslash (\) is the escape character.
	
	Escape character is used to assign special meaning
	to a character following the backslash. The
	following are examples.

	\t	Tab
	\n	New line
	\r	Carriage return
	\\	The backslash character itself
	\"	The double quote character


	The following have special significance in editor commands to identify search
	targets. See help page on edit.
	\[	The opening square bracket.
	\]	The closing square bracket.

	The following have special significance in string editor commands to identify search
	targets. See help pages on string editors.
	\^	The cut-here or caret character.

	The following have special significance in regular expressions. See help page on RE.

	\.	Period.
	\,	Comma.
	\@	The at symbol.
	\:	Colon.
	\;	Semicolon.
	\&	The ampersand symbol.
	\(	Opening parenthesis.
	\)	Closing parenthesis.
	\#	The sharp symbol.
	\>	The greater than sign.


Restrictions
	Escape character can only be used within double quotes.

Valid Examples
	echo "Count of words:\t" $word_count
	Will print the string "Count of words:" followed by a tab character followed
	by the value of variable $word_count.

	echo "List of files follows.\n\n" $file_list
	Will print the string "List of files follows." followed by 
	an empty line followed by the value of variable $file_list. The
	variable $file_list itself may contain escape characters including
	new lines.

Invalid Examples
	echo \t
	Will produce error. The tab character will not be printed.
	It is not inclosed in double quote. The following will work.
	echo "\t"

See Also
constant
var
edit
RE