Special characters are those that are non-alphanumeric/punctuation. They require a special representation so that they are visible and not translated as formatting. A "\r" is a carriage return, part of what makes your cursor go to the next line.
| Action or Symbol | ASCII | Type as: |
|---|---|---|
| carriage return | CR | \r |
| newline | NL or LF | \n |
| horizontal tab | HT | \t |
| vertical tab | VT | \v |
| formfeed | FF | \f |
| backspace | BS | \b |
| bell char | BS ?? | \a |
| match any single character | . |
| Pattern | Read as: |
|---|---|
| first line\nsecond line | first line second line |