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A comment on Whence '\N'?.

Re:Whence '\N'? by kijin on Sunday October 06, 2024 @12:25PM (#41758204)
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.
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Re:Whence '\N'? by cpach on Sunday October 06, 2024 @12:48PM (#41758386)
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;
  }
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Re:Whence '\N'? by sedatk on Sunday October 06, 2024 @12:51PM (#41758407)
So, the HN title is wrong.
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Re:Whence '\N'? by isatty on Sunday October 06, 2024 @12:57PM (#41758450)
The original title is.
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Re:Whence '\N'? by niederman on Sunday October 06, 2024 @01:28PM (#41758613)
No, the original title is correct, small caps are just an alternate way of setting lowercase letters.
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Re:Whence '\N'? by neuroelectron on Sunday October 06, 2024 @03:35PM (#41759606)
When have you ever seen small caps in use on this website?
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Re:Whence '\N'? by deathanatos on Sunday October 06, 2024 @01:57PM (#41758799)
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'?
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Re:Whence '\N'? by binary132 on Sunday October 06, 2024 @03:44PM (#41759683)
That is in fact why I clicked this article. Oh well. Still a fun read. :)
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Re:Whence '\N'? by deathanatos on Sunday October 06, 2024 @01:59PM (#41758822)
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.

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Re:Whence '\N'? by paulddraper on Sunday October 06, 2024 @12:28PM (#41758224)
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?

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