How to print a "\" - ComputerCraft Forums (archive)

Techman749 #1

14 posts

Location West Virginia, USA

Posted 29 August 2014 - 01:22 PM

Hello, ComputerCraft Community!

I was trying to create a pinwheel in one of my programs and for some reason the syntax highlighter does not pick up on a [print("\")]. Am I doing something wrong? Here is the code I have for the pinwheel:


term.setCursorPos(1,1)
print("|")
sleep(0.5)
term.setCursorPos(1,1)
print("/")
sleep(0.5)
term.setCursorPos(1,1)
print("-")
sleep(0.5)
term.setCursorPos(1,1)
print("\")
sleep(0.5)
term.setCursorPos(1,1)
print("|")

Any suggestions are accepted! Thanks!

KingofGamesYami #2

3057 posts

Location United States of America

Posted 29 August 2014 - 01:23 PM


print( "\\" )

Techman749 #3

14 posts

Location West Virginia, USA

Posted 29 August 2014 - 01:25 PM

Thanks!

TheOddByte #4

1852 posts

Location Sweden

Posted 29 August 2014 - 06:42 PM

If you want to get a better understanding of it: http://www.lua.org/pil/2.4.html

Cranium #5

Cranium's profile picture

3790 posts

Location Lincoln, Nebraska

Posted 29 August 2014 - 07:34 PM

Since \ is an escape character, in order to actually print it, you need to escape first, then use the slash again.
Hence print("\\")

Anavrins #6

Anavrins's profile picture

756 posts

Posted 29 August 2014 - 09:36 PM

As people stated, you need to use the escape character \ if you want to include \ " ' [ ] in strings.
However, if I can suggest, you can save some lines of code by doing this instead.


local pwheel = {"|", "/", "-", "\\"} ## You can add as many frame as you want here without changing the rest of the code
local i = 0
while true do ## You can also use a for loop
  i = (i+1) % #pwheel
  term.setCursorPos(1,1)
  term.write(pwheel[i+1])
  os.sleep(0.5)
end

Edited on 29 August 2014 - 07:37 PM