The printf() function does not interpret backslash-escape sequences in either C or SQLite. That is something that happens during translation, by a C or C++ compiler, from string literals in the source text to char sequences in the compiled output. And since SQLite does not implement the non-SQL convention of backslash escaping in its string literals, your examples would not work even if quoted correctly. In SQL, the doublequote is used to delimit identifiers, not string literals. In SQL, a string literal is delimited by singlequote characters, except where they are paired within the quoted text.