Backing the backslash

I’m almost ashamed to say it, but I never really gave the backslash a second thought. The backslash’s forward-leaning counterpart is everywhere, especially in computing. It lives in network and web addresses such as ; in file paths, such as /home/keith ; and it introduces human-readable “comments” in any number of programming languages, often like /* this */ or // this . But the backslash? It’s a…