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<META NAME="Author" CONTENT="Jerry Peek">
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<TITLE>MH & nmh: When Is a Backslash Not a Backslash?</TITLE>
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<BODY BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF">
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<H1>When Is a Backslash Not a Backslash?</H1>
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[<A HREF="senove.htm#wiabnab">return-to: Overview: Sending MH Messages</A>]
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UNIX uses the backslash character (<TT>\</TT>) in a lot of places,
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which can be confusing for beginners.
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Here's a guide to backslashes:
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When you're typing a line of input on a terminal and you want to tell UNIX that
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I'm going to type is not the end of the line," you'll often
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type a backslash just before the
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That happened in the previous example, where you wanted to tell <I>prompter</I>
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key you pressed would not be the end of the field.
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Backslashes are often typed before a
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<B>to continue a line</B>.
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Backslashes are also used when you're <B>typing special characters</B>.
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For instance, some versions of UNIX use the at sign (<TT>@</TT>) character
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as the "line kill" character.
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That means when you type an <TT>@</TT> on your terminal, you're telling
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UNIX to forget everything you've typed so far on that line and start over.
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Sometimes -- when you're typing a mail address like <TT>vicki@squidbait</TT>,
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for example, you want a literal <TT>@</TT> character.
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You don't want the <TT>@</TT> to erase the word "vicki."
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On those UNIX systems, you'd type <TT>vicki\@squidbait</TT> to tell UNIX,
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"Treat this next <TT>@</TT> literally."
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When some UNIX programs <B>display on a terminal</B> and a line is too long
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to fit on the screen, they split the line into pieces and show a backslash
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(<TT>\</TT>) at the end of each piece of the line except the last.
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One example is the GNU Emacs editor.
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GNU Emacs will display a very long line this way:
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This is the first part of the very long line etc. etc. \
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and... this is the second part blah blah blah etc. etc.\
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and now this is finally the end of the line.
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In that case, the backslash is not really in the file that Emacs
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it's just a signal to you that the line continues.
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[<A HREF="tocs/jump.htm">Table of Contents</A>] [<A HREF="indexes/map.htm">Index</A>]
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[<A HREF="senove.htm#wiabnab">Return to: Overview: Sending MH Messages</A>]
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<EM>Last change $Date: 1999/10/10 05:14:05 $</EM>
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This file is from the third edition of the book <I>MH & xmh: Email
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for Users & Programmers</I>, ISBN 1-56592-093-7, by Jerry Peek.
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Copyright © 1991, 1992, 1995 by O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.
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This file is freely available; you can redistribute it and/or modify
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it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
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the Free Software Foundation. For more information, see
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<A HREF="../copying.htm">the file <I>copying.htm</I></A>.
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Suggestions are welcome:
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<A HREF="http://www.jpeek.com/">Jerry Peek</A>
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<A HREF="mailto:jpeek@jpeek.com"><jpeek@jpeek.com></A>
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