\ on every keyboard
| System | Layout | Key combination |
|---|---|---|
| macOS | French – Numerical | ⌥ Option+⇧ Shift+: |
| macOS | French | ⌥ Option+⇧ Shift+: |
| macOS | Belgian | ⌥ Option+⇧ Shift+: |
| macOS | Swiss French | ⌥ Option+⇧ Shift+7 |
| macOS | Canadian Multilingual (CSA) | ⇧ Shift+/ |
| macOS | Canadian French | \ |
| macOS | Spanish | ⌥ Option+º |
| macOS | Latin American | ⌥ Option+' |
| macOS | U.S. | \ |
| macOS | ABC | \ |
| macOS | U.S. International – PC | \ |
What is the backslash for?
The backslash \ is mostly used in computing:
- Windows paths:
C:\Users\Jane\Documents; - escape sequences in strings:
\nfor a new line,\tfor a tab,\"for a quote; - LaTeX commands:
\frac{1}{2},\section{Introduction}; - regular expressions:
\dfor a digit,\.for a literal dot; - line continuation in shell scripts.
Pitfalls
- Do not confuse it with the forward slash
/, used in web addresses and in macOS and Linux paths. On a Mac, paths use/, never\. - On this layout: \. French Mac layouts have no backslash printed on the keys: ⌥ Option+⇧ Shift+:.
- In some Japanese fonts the backslash is drawn as a yen sign ¥: a display issue, not a keyboard one.
\ technical details
| Unicode code point | U+005C |
|---|---|
| Official Unicode name | REVERSE SOLIDUS |
| HTML entity | \ |
| CSS | content: "\5C"; |
| JavaScript / JSON | "\u005C" |
| UTF-8 bytes | 5C |
| URL encoding | %5C |
The official name comes from the Unicode Character Database (ICU).