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The incorrect capitalization made me think that, perhaps, there's a scarcely known escape sequence \N that is different from \n. Maybe it matches any character that isn't a newline? Nope, just small caps in the original article.


If you do view source, it’s actually \n, but it’s not displayed as such because of this CSS rule:

  .title {
    font-variant: small-caps;
  }


So, the HN title is wrong.


The original title is.


No, the original title is correct, small caps are just an alternate way of setting lowercase letters.


When have you ever seen small caps in use on this website?


In addition to what others have said about smallcaps being a stylistic rendering, if you copy & paste the original title, you'll get

  Whence '\n'?


There is actually.

Many systems use \N in CSVs or similar as NULL, to distinguish from an empty string.

I figured this is what the article was about?


Python has a \N escape sequence. It inserts a Unicode character by name. For example,

  '\N{PILE OF POO}'
is the Unicode string containing a single USV, the pile of poop emoji.

Much more self-documenting than doing it with a hex sequence with \u or \U.


That is in fact why I clicked this article. Oh well. Still a fun read. :)




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