Why can I display every character in quotations with std::cout?

[WowICantProgram]

When I run this, the "\" doesn't show. How come?

#include <iostream>
using namespace std;

int main ()
{
cout << "   /\ " <<endl;
cout << "  /__\ " <<endl;
cout << " /    \ " <<endl;

 return 0;
}

[whitenite1]

@WowICantProgram

The '\' character is special. To show one on screen, you must use two of them, side-by-side, as in '\\'. As you may have seen in other programs, you can use '\n' for a newline, '\t' as a tab, a '\b' to back the cursor one space, a '\"' to show a quote and a few others. Try it in your program, and see the results.

[WowICantProgram]

@whitenite1

Ah, I see. Thanks for the reply. '\\' fixed everything, I thought the quotations would be enough to remove the traits that '\' has.

[LB]

'"' and "'" don't require slashes, whereas "\"" and '\'' do.

[MiiNiPaa]

In C++11 you can use raw string literals to avoid escaping characters:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

#include <iostream> int main () { std::cout << R"( /\ /__\ / \ )"; }

/\ /__\ / \