Don't understand the backslash here

Question

I am following this command on the readme file in github to copy a file but I don't understand how to type it in the terminal it has this backslash and terminal is spitting back that I am not using the copy command correctly

cp -r rails_tutorial_sublime_text/* \
        ~/Library/Application\ Support/Sublime\ Text\ 2/Packages/User/

What do I actually type into terminal in this instance?

Answer 1

A backslash followed by a newline character means the command continues to the next line. You could remove the backslash and type all of that on the same line if you wanted to.