I noticed that when I pass a string like this \[(tan(w)\] as a parameter to a function, the argument when printed in the function I passed it into is [(tan(w)]. Why would the slashes get stripped?
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3 Answers
The slash in a string in any language whose syntax is inherited from C is used to escape other characters. For example if you want to put a double quote (") in your string, you use \"
To put a slash in a string, you have to put a double slash : "\\[(tan(w)\\]"
11 Comments
Dennis Traub
JavaScript is a language of the C family?
Denys Séguret
@DennisTraub Its syntax, yes, just like java, Go, C#, etc.
Alnitak
I would say "language with C style syntax".
Dennis Traub
It might somewhat look like a C-based language, but that doesn't make it one. In fact I only started to understand JavaScript once I recognized it's not C-based.
cHao
They're just somewhat related syntaxwise. A lot of the concepts don't translate very well in either direction, but if you know C syntax, it goes a long way toward learning the basic syntax of a bunch of other languages. The concepts in JS, though, came from a whole different place (Scheme, Self, and a few others not even close in syntax).
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Backslash characters are special.
If you want to pass one in a string, and have it preserved, you have to pass two:
"\\[(tan(w)\\]"
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In a string literal, the \ has special meaning. It means that you're starting an escape sequence meant to represent some character.
If the escape sequence actually has a specified meaning, the new character is substituted for the entire sequence. If not, the slash is just removed.
The escape sequence to include a literal backslash in the resulting string is a backslash followed by another backslash. \\
