Editing literal characters

== Special characters cannot be directly included in a literal string == Special characters, such as [[control character]]s or [[metacharacter]]s cannot be included directly in a [[string]] value. This is because these [[character]]s have a special meaning to the [[awk]] interpreter, and may cause [[misbehaviour]] of the [[script]]. These [[character]]s can be inserted as literal characters by using literal character notation. == Literal Character Notation == Literal character notation enables [[special character]]s to represented in a [[string]] by using a [[representation code]] that begins with a [[backslash]] symbol: === Literal Character Representation Digraphs === The following table shows literal characters that can be represented using the backslash, together with the digraphical representation codes: | Digraph | Literal character | \a | ring the terminal bell | \b | backspace | \c | suppress subsequent output | \e | ascii escape | \f | form feed | \n | newline | \r | carriage return | \t | tab | \v | vertical tab | \\ | backslash === Numerical Literal Character Representation === Literal ascii character codes can also be output using a numeric representation code: | Representation | Literal character | \0dd | dd is the octal character code of the represented ascii character === Using a backslash to insert literal characters into a string === The following example shows how a backslash symbol is used to insert literal characters into a string. Note that the \n digraph is used to represent a newline character: {{{ print "first line\nsecond line" # The \n represents a newline character in a string }}} The above literal string contains an embedded newline character and should print as follows: {{{ first line second line }}}

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This change is a minor edit.

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