In Javascript (Node) (fs module), when reading from a txt file, it converts all backslashes to double-backslashes, so that they don't accidentally escape the characters following them.
however, having \n ACTUALLY escape the character n might be desirable in some cases.
I could do something like this:

str = str.replace(/\\n/g,"\n").replace(/\\t/g,"\t")... etc

but if there's a function that does this automatically, this is just unneccesary repetition.
i've done heaps of research, and still can't find a solution to this problem