Q:

why backslash as escape character instead of a less-used character?

In C/C++ (and other languages) the escape character is a backslash. But the backslash is popular (in paths/regexes). Why is not a less popular character, such as a tilde (~) or expononent (^) used?

A:

The question should be the other way around: why was the backslash, which until the early 1980s was mainly used for escape characters, chosen as a path separator in MS-DOS? See this blog post for the answer.

