In double-quoted strings, the backslash character is used to introduce escape sequences that represent other characters. For example, ‘\n’ embeds a newline character in a double-quoted string and ‘\"’ embeds a double quote character. In single-quoted strings, backslash is not a special character. Here is an example showing the difference:
toascii ("\n")
⇒ 10
toascii ('\n')
⇒ [ 92 110 ]
Here is a table of all the escape sequences used in Octave (within double quoted strings). They are the same as those used in the C programming language.
\\\"\'\0\a\b\f\n\r\t\vIn a single-quoted string there is only one escape sequence: you may insert a single quote character using two single quote characters in succession. For example,
'I can''t escape'
⇒ I can't escape
In scripts the two different string types can be distinguished if necessary
by using is_dq_string and is_sq_string.
Return true if x is a double-quoted character string.
See also: is_sq_string, ischar.
Return true if x is a single-quoted character string.
See also: is_dq_string, ischar.