The characters are exactly as documented - \b equates to a character code of 0x08 and \r equates to 0x0d. The thing that varies is how your OS reacts to those characters. Back when displays were trying to emulate an old teletype those actions were standardized, but they are less useful in modern environments and compatibility is not guaranteed.

Post by jonsca and tux4life have divulged all the information related to this topic.But would like to add some from my side. · Apart from the printable characters (character which can be seen on a output screen) we make use of several other operations when working on any text. When we work on a text editor,the text editor handles all the operations on its own and keeps us away from implementation details.But in C those operations are included in the character set itself so that a user can make use of them and format his/her output in any way required. · These characters which hold a very special meaning and work instead of functions as in text editors are your "Escape Characters". · Every letter has its identity. Say character 'A' instructs the machine to store value of 65 in 1 byte to symbolise 'A'. In escape characters we tell the compiler to escape or neglect the meaning of original character and act differently by placing the '\' symbol before it.Hence the name "Escape Character". You can try something like: · cout << "TestString1__TestString2"; · and place '\a' '\b' '\c' ... and so on and test what every character does.

There was a B, by Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie. There wasn't an "A" prior to that, as far as I know; "B" got its name from BCPL, which is was based on. When Ritchie wrote a successor, he called it "C". Other people took the convention further, calling their intended successors "D" and "C++". A+, J, K, and Q were inspired by APL, and are not part of the C family.