Strings with exclamation marks in Mathematica

Question

Given this input

FullForm[ToString[TraditionalForm[x]]]

Mathematica outputs

"\!\(TraditionalForm\`x\)"

It seems like \! at the beginning of the string indicates that the following is to be interpreted as an expression. But this can't be quite right, because

"\!\(Minus\`x\)"

displays as simply x, rather than -x.

How should the escape characters \!, \(, \`, \) be understood?

ok, this is what you need to know: tutorial/StringRepresentationOfBoxes — Kuba, Jan 30 '15 at 12:29
why this is always so hard to find those tutorials... (I really mean it, I'm struggling with it.) — Kuba, Jan 30 '15 at 12:29
Thanks, @Kuba. That's exactly what I was looking for. (Searching for \! on Google and in the documentation brought up nothing relevant.) — Stephen Powell, Jan 30 '15 at 12:48

score 3 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:55

I decided to edit the title and answer this question as wiki because I think it is not easy for new users to find this kind of information. The more if they are not aware of special handling of ? ! in search fields.

So the explanation of things like:

\!\(TraditionalForm\` c (1 + x)\)

is in the tutorial String Representation of Boxes.

Here are related topics on SE:

Strings with exclamation marks in Mathematica

1 Answers1