title: What are acceptable custom escape characters for use within C++ string literals
body: <p>I want to embed certain signals within a string literal in the same style as "\n" and "\a".  My program looks at the string, sees the escape character, and then acts depending on the character following it. </p>
  
  <p>The problem however is that C++, as part of it's compilation process, resolves anything using "\" as the escape character.  In addition, the C standard library, which I use frequently, uses "%" as an escape character too.  </p>
  
  <p>So both "\" and "%" can't be used.  The forward slash "/" looks too similar to "\", and for the moment, most other characters are either too commonly used, or do not give the appearance of an escape.</p>
  
  <p>My question is, what is the best character to use as an escape character, that does not collide with common C++ string utilities that rely on their own escaping character.  "Best" in this sense, would objectively describe a character that is used infrequently in normal dialog and mathematics, and is readily identifiable as an escape at a glance.</p>