Backing the backslash

I’m almost ashamed to say it, but I never really gave the backslash a second thought.

The backslash’s forward-leaning counterpart is everywhere, especially in computing. It lives in network and web addresses such as https://shadycharacters.co.uk; in file paths, such as /home/keith; and it introduces human-readable “comments” in any number of programming languages, often like /* this */ or // this.

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