Why double slash dot (ie: \\.) in htaccess regex?

Question

From another answer, this double slash dot is common

RedirectMatch 404 /\\.svn(/|$)

Since we're matching "/.svn" etc., why isn't this a single slash to escape the period?

Answer 1

Double escaping is allowed here but not really required. So both of these rules will work:

RedirectMatch 410 /\\.svn(/|$)

OR

RedirectMatch 410 /\.svn(/|$)