bash: Escape Character

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1 3.1.2.1 Escape Character
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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).
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