windows - What is the difference between and \ in file path

Question

What is the difference between single slash and double slash in file path for Windows operating system such as

c:\PersonalMyFolder\MyFile.jpg

and

c:PersonalMyFolderMyFile.jpg

What if I use the single or double slash because I have tried both for storing images in my code (in webconfig file) and both of them work fine.

Is there any difference??

Answer 1

Windows ignores double backslashes. So while the second syntax with is correct and you should use that one, the first with \ works too.

The only exception is double-backslash at the very beginning of a path that indicates a UNC path.
See Universal Naming Convention.

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Though note that in many programming languages like C, C++, Java, C#, Python, PHP, Perl, a backslash works as an escape character in string literals. As such, it needs to be escaped itself (usually with another backslash). So in these languages, you usually need to use a double backslash in the string literal to actually get a single backslash for a path. So for example in C#, the following string literal is actually interpreted as C:PersonalMyFolderMyFile.jpg:

var path = "C:\Personal\MyFolder\MyFile.jpg";

Though there are alternative syntaxes. For example in C#, you can use the following syntax with the same result:

var path = @"C:PersonalMyFolderMyFile.jpg";