forward slash

The forward slash, or slash, character (/) is the divide symbol in programming and on calculator keyboards. For example, 10 / 7 means 10 divided by 7. The slash is also often used in command line syntax to indicate a switch. For example, in the DOS Xcopy statement xcopy *.* d: /s, the /s is a switch that tells the program to copy all subdirectories. In Unix paths, which have become popular due to Internet addresses, the slash separates the elements of the path as in www.company.com/news/previous/abc.html. See backslash.