1 1 3.1.2.1 Escape Character 1 ........................ 1 1 A non-quoted backslash '\' is the Bash escape character. It preserves 1 the literal value of the next character that follows, with the exception 1 of 'newline'. If a '\newline' pair appears, and the backslash itself is 1 not quoted, the '\newline' is treated as a line continuation (that is, 1 it is removed from the input stream and effectively ignored). 1