Sometimes in programming,
we need to use
non-printable items.
For example, on laptops,
if you press the wrong button,
then you hear a beep sound.
How do we tell the computer to
play that sound?
Researchers had agreed that \a
would be treated as
an alarm or a beep.
Notice that it starts with a \.
Because we are running Ruby online,
you won't be able to hear a beep,
but if you run \a on your laptop
after installing Ruby,
then you will be able to hear the beep.
These special instructions that
start with a backslash are
called Escape Sequences.
Given below is the list of
escape sequences with their
corresponding meaning:
| ` | Single quote |
| " | Double quote |
| \a | Audible bell |
| \b | Backspace |
| \f | Form feed |
| \r | Carriage return |
| \s | A space |
| \t | Horizontal tab |
| \n | New line |
Let's try out the last one.
When we use escape sequence
in single quotes, then Ruby
treats it as a string and
nothing special happens.
In the example given above,
nothing special happened
and \n is printed as is.
If the string is in double quotes,
then Ruby obeys the rules
of escape sequence.
In this case,
because of \n,
we get a new line.