What is the purpose of escape characters in the C language?

The purpose of escape characters is to represent special or control characters within a string. In C language, escape characters are represented by using a backslash (\) before the character or string.

Common escape characters include:

1. \n: line break marker
2. Tab: Tabulation character
3. Carriage return: Enter key
4. ‘

   or

   ‘ : single quotation mark

5. quotation mark
6. backslash

By using escape characters, we are able to insert special characters or control characters into a string without causing errors in the compiler. For example, using \n can create a new line in the output instead of interpreting it as the end of the string. Similarly, using \t can create a tab in the output, allowing for alignment.

Here is an example of using escape characters:

#include <stdio.h>

int main() {
    printf("Hello\tWorld!\n");
    printf("This is a new line.\n");
    printf("He said, \"Hello!\"\n");
    printf("This is a backslash: \\");
    return 0;
}

Output:

Hello   World!
This is a new line.
He said, "Hello!"
This is a backslash: \