Why “\” gives error while storing it in string in PHP?

Question

My string looks like:

$fullPath = $dirName . \"/\" . $file;

If I replace / with \\, it gives error:

Expecting identifier

Answer 1

\ is an escape character. It is a special character used to define either escape sequences or to escape string-delimiters if you want to use them in the string itself.

The correct usage is to escape the escape character like this: \\. This will tell the parser the you wanted the literal backslash and not the special meaning of it.

Answer 2

You need to escape the slash: $fullPath = $dirName . "\\" . $file;

Answer 3

You might use apostrophes to denote a non-parsed string:

$fullPath = $dirName . '\' . $file;

Answer 4

You need "\\" because \ is an escape character.