Escape sequence

This article is about sequences of characters that, because of a prefix, have a special meaning, possibly to control peripheral devices. For specialized usages, see Escape sequence (disambiguation).

In computing, an escape sequence is a sequence of characters that has a special semantic meaning based on an established convention that specifies an escape character prefix in addition to the syntax of the rest of the text of a sequence. A convention can define any particular character code as a sequence prefix. Some conventions use a normal, printable character such as backslash (\) or ampersand (&). Others use a non-printable (a.k.a. control) character such as ASCII escape.

Escape sequences date back at least to the 1874 Baudot code.

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