In PHP, the escape slash (\) is used to escape special characters within strings.To include certain characters within a string without triggering their special meaning, you precede them with a backslash (\).
Example, in the string "This is a \"quoted\" string."
, the double quotes are escaped by using the escape slash (\). Without the escaping, PHP would interpret the quotes as string delimiters, which may result in syntax errors or unexpected behavior.