What is the purpose of escape characters in C++?

In C++, escape characters are used to represent certain special characters that cannot be directly used in code or require special processing. Escape characters start with a backslash (\) followed by a character, such as \n for a new line, \t for a tab, and \\ for a backslash itself. By using escape characters, special characters can be represented in strings or control the output format of strings.