Andreas Gruenbacher [off-list ref] writes:
To me the most obvious escape sequence would be \x for disabling whatever
special meaning x has (for non-alphabetic x). With quoting you likely
eventually end up needing \' in some cases anyway...
I think it's a good idea to _avoid_ using backslash as an escape when
possible -- the potential for confusion and screwups from multiple
layers all interpreting backslash should be familiar to most people
here... (single-quote suffers from the same problem a bit, but at least
it's not quite as overused as backslash)
-Miles
--
One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to
do, and always a clever thing to say. -- Will Durant