Character Literals
Rules
- Must be surrounded by single quotes (').
- May include any single printable character (e.g. 'a').
- May include any single non-printable character using escape sequences, also called diagraphs (e.g. '\0' for NUL).
Examples of Valid Character Literals
| 'a' | 'T' | '\n' | '5' | '@' | ' ' (space) |
Examples of Invalid Character Literals
| 'me' | '23' | ''' |
Because the single quote (') is used to delimit character literals, the single quote cannot by itself be a character literal. It must be specified using an escape sequence: '\''.
Although escape sequences look like two characters, the backslash (\) is treated specially in character and string literals. It signals that the character that follows is special. It either represents a non-printable character, as in the case of '\0' for NUL, or a character that cannot be used on its own in a character literal, such as the single quote or backslash themselves, which are represented as '\'' and '\\' respectively.