escape character; ESC
A control character used in computing to signal that the following character(s) should be interpreted differently, often to represent special commands or formatting.
By including an escape character in a string, you can treat characters with special meanings as ordinary characters.
In this programming language, the backslash is used as the escape character.
Wasei-eigo (Japanese-made English) combining 'escape' and '文字' (character). The term is a direct borrowing of the English computing term 'escape character'.