Sometimes it desirable to print (write) a term with the character escape sequences intact (syntactically) as opposed to them being performed (semantically), e.g. print \n instead of performing a new line.
write_canonical/1 is the sword of choice in such situations.
?- write("string\n\n").
string
true.
?- write_canonical("string\n\n").
"string\n\n"
true.
Since format/2,3 is often used for displaying output, write_canonical/1 is an available option using the special sequence ~k.
k
Give the next argument to write_canonical/1.
?- format('~w',["string\n\n"]).
string
true.
?- format('~k',["string\n\n"]).
"string\n\n"
true.