What is the significance of using backslashes (\) in PHP scripts, specifically within strings like in the example provided?

In PHP scripts, backslashes (\) are used as escape characters to indicate that the following character should be treated differently. For example, if you want to include a double quote (") within a string, you would use a backslash (\") to escape it and prevent it from prematurely ending the string. Similarly, backslashes are used to escape other special characters like newline (\n) or tab (\t) within strings. Example:

// Using backslashes to escape special characters within a string
$string = "This is a \"quoted\" string with a newline character \n and a tab character \t.";
echo $string;