A character constant is a character enclosed in single quotes,
as in 'x'
.
The value of a character constant is the numerical value of the character
in the machine's character set, for example:
'A' | valid (value is 65 for the ASCII character set) |
'AB' | invalid (more than one character) |
Certain special characters, such as the single quote '
and the backslash \
, may be represented according
to the following table of escape sequences:
newline | NL(LF) | '\n' |
horizontal tab | HT | '\t' |
backspace | BS | '\b' |
carriage return | CR | '\r' |
form feed | FF | '\f' |
backslash | \ | '\\' |
single quote | ' | '\'' |
double quote | " | '\"' |
null | NUL | '\0' |
bit pattern | ddd | '\ ddd' |
The escape \
ddd
consists of the backslash followed by a stream of octal
digits which are taken to specify the value of the desired character.
If the character following a backslash is not one of those specified,
the backslash is ignored.