I've also discovered the history of the terms "Escape sequence" and "Escape characters." It's very simple - an 'escape sequence' was ESCAPE (0x1B) followed by any other character, and indicated some particular action that was not what that other character would usually produce. An escape character is thus any character used in an escape sequence.
Now, a question for you: Is there any solvable problem which has a finite number of distinct solutions?
I mean, consider the problem "What is the value of 1+1 ?". The 'normal' solution is just "1+1 = 2", but you could also have "1+1 = 2*1 = 2" or "1+1 = 1.0 + 1.0 = 2.0". Or even just "1+1 = 1+1+0+0+0+...+0 = 2," where the ellipses omit any number of "+0" terms.
Each of these solutions give the same end result, but differ in their characteristics. The number of stages, and the number of terms at each stage, differ; the nature of the terms themselves differ. Simple things like the length in characters of the solution differ. Thus, the solutions are distinct from one another. Note that by "solution," I'm not just talking about the end result - I'm talking about the process used to derive it.
I submit that any problem that has at least one solution must have an infinite number of distinct solutions. Can you prove me wrong?
