Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!att!dptg!pegasus!hansen
From: hansen@pegasus.ATT.COM (Tony L. Hansen)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: How do you display a back-slash in nroff?
Summary: use \e to display a backslash
Keywords: nroff, troff
Message-ID: <4978@pegasus.ATT.COM>
Date: 18 Aug 90 05:50:06 GMT
References: <1990Aug7.190300.8450@investor.pgh.pa.us> <662@vidiot.UUCP>
Reply-To: hansen@pegasus.ATT.COM (Tony L. Hansen)
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs NJ USA
Lines: 20

< From: brown@vidiot.UUCP (Vidiot)
< In article <1990Aug7.190300.8450@investor.pgh.pa.us> rbp@investor.pgh.pa.us (Bob Peirce #305) writes:
<< I have read the manual.  I have experimented with .ec and with escaping
<< one back-slash with one to many with no success. Is there a way?

< Outside of a macro, ie, in the text file, it is just like you did:  \\
< While inside of a macro it is: \\\\  and double that for each macro
< defined inside of a macro.  It may actually work as \\ inside of a macro,
< since you are not fetching values from a variable.

< Without doing anything special to nroff when it starts, the \\ should
< print a single \ without a problem.  I use it all the time in troff test.

There's never a need to use multiple backslashes to get a backslash to
print. Just use \e to print the "current escape character", which is always
the backslash unless the .ec command is issued.

					Tony Hansen
				att!pegasus!hansen, attmail!tony
				    hansen@pegasus.att.com