No, that’s more or less what they’re meant to do.
In C (and many other languages), you can insert hard-to-see/type characters using \ notation:
\ais alert/bell\bis backspace/rubout\nis newline\ris carriage return (return to left margin)\tis tab
You can also specify the octal value of any character using \0nnn, or the hexadecimal value of any character with \xnn.
- EG: the ASCII value of
_is octal 137, hex 5f, so it can also be typed\0137or\x5f, if your keyboard didn’t have a_key or something. This is more useful for control characters like NUL (\0) and ESC (\033)
As someone posted (then deleted their answer before I could +1 it), there are also some less-frequently-used ones:
\fis a form feed/new page (eject page from printer)\vis a vertical tab (move down one line, on the same column)
On screens, \f usually works the same as \v, but on some printers/teletypes, it will
go all the way to the next form/sheet of paper.