Backslash-hell can be solved in ASCII-based languages too. E.g. in ruby there are several ways to have a string literal:

    "hello world"
    "hello, #{name}!" # interpolation    
    %{hello world}
    %{hello, #{name}!} # interpolation
    %{hello, "#{name}"} # interpolation with quotes
    %|hello, "#{name}"| # you can use other kinds of surrounding "brackets" if you don't like curly ones