| Escape character | Meaning |
| \a | alarm, bell, BEL |
| \e | escape, ESC |
| \f | form feed, FF |
| \n | newline, LF-CR |
| \r | return, CR |
| \t | tab, HT |
| \033 | octal char (starts with 0) |
| \x33 | hex char (starts with x) |
| \x{263A} | wide hex char (Unicode smiley) |
| \c | control char, e.g. "\cz" is ctrl-z |
| \N{name} | named char, see: "man charnames" |
| \l | force next char to lower case |
| \u | force next char to upper case |
| \L | force all following char to lower case (or till \E) |
| \U | force all following char to upper case (or till \E) |
| \Q | quote (disable) pattern metacharacters till \E;
Cannot include a literal "$" or "@" within a "\Q" sequence. An unescaped "$" or "@" interpolates the corresponding variable, while escaping will cause the literal character "\$" to be matched. |
| \E | end case modification for \U \L \Q |