escape (idea)

If you want to include those characters / strings as such, you need to tell the system they are not meant as commands, but as simple text. This is called 'escaping' the special characters.

How to do escaping depends on the language / program for your input, but it usually involves putting some escape character in front of the command.

Some examples:

• In Unix shells (and Perl), the backslash '\' is used:

  # How to output quotation marks
  echo "Then he said \"This is not okay.\" "
  

• In Latex, you must insert certain characters by name (just like in HTML, see article above in this node). Sometimes you can also quote with a backslash.

  This is a backslash: $\backslash$.