Using escape sequence at runtime with C++ - c++

Question

I am quiet new with C++ and I need to read an input from a MSVC++ text-field and write it to a file. I need to write \n as a new line to the file and not as \n.
After some researching I found that escape characters only work at compile-time. Is it possible for me to use it on run-time. I am only using C++ for this task.

Answer 1

I might write this a bit differently if I were doing it in C++ today (I wrote this in C around 20 years ago), but it might at least provide a little inspiration:
/*
** Public Domain by Jerry Coffin.
**
** Interprets a string in a manner similar to that the compiler
** does string literals in a program. All escape sequences are
** longer than their translated equivalant, so the string is
** translated in place and either remains the same length or
** becomes shorter.
*/
#include <string.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include "snip_str.h"
char *translate(char *string)
{
char *here=string;
size_t len=strlen(string);
int num;
int numlen;
while (NULL!=(here=strchr(here,'\\')))
{
numlen=1;
switch (here[1])
{
case '\\':
break;
case 'r':
*here = '\r';
break;
case 'n':
*here = '\n';
break;
case 't':
*here = '\t';
break;
case 'v':
*here = '\v';
break;
case 'a':
*here = '\a';
break;
case '0':
case '1':
case '2':
case '3':
case '4':
case '5':
case '6':
case '7':
numlen = sscanf(here,"%o",&num);
*here = (char)num;
break;
case 'x':
numlen = sscanf(here,"%x",&num);
*here = (char) num;
break;
}
num = here - string + numlen;
here++;
memmove(here,here+numlen,len-num );
}
return string;
}