Character constant

Syntax

where

• c-char is either

• a character from the basic source character set minus single-quote ( ' ), backslash ( \ ), or the newline character.
• escape sequence: one of special character escapes \ ' \ " \ ? \\ \a \b \f \n \r \t \v , hex escapes \x... or octal escapes \... as defined in escape sequences .

• c-char-sequence is a sequence of two or more c-char s.

Notes

Multicharacter constants were inherited by C from the B programming language. Although not specified by the C standard, most compilers (MSVC is a notable exception) implement multicharacter constants as specified in B: the values of each char in the constant initialize successive bytes of the resulting integer, in big-endian zero-padded right-adjusted order, e.g. the value of ' \1 ' is 0x00000001 and the value of ' \1 \2 \3 \4 ' is 0x01020304 .

In C++, encodable ordinary character literals have type char , rather than int .

Unlike integer constants , a character constant may have a negative value if char is signed: on such implementations ' \xFF ' is an int with the value - 1 .

When used in a controlling expression of #if or #elif , character constants may be interpreted in terms of the source character set, the execution character set, or some other implementation-defined character set.

16/32-bit multicharacter constants are not widely supported and removed in C23. Some common implementations (e.g. clang) do not accept them at all.

Example

#include <stddef.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <uchar.h>
int main(void)
{
    printf("constant value     \n");
    printf("-------- ----------\n");
    // integer character constants,
    int c1='a'; printf("'a':\t %#010x\n", c1);
    int c2='🍌'; printf("'🍌':\t %#010x\n\n", c2); // implementation-defined
    // multicharacter constant
    int c3='ab'; printf("'ab':\t %#010x\n\n", c3); // implementation-defined
    // 16-bit wide character constants
    char16_t uc1 = u'a'; printf("'a':\t %#010x\n", (int)uc1);
    char16_t uc2 = u'¢'; printf("'¢':\t %#010x\n", (int)uc2);
    char16_t uc3 = u'猫'; printf("'猫':\t %#010x\n", (int)uc3);
    // implementation-defined (🍌 maps to two 16-bit characters)
    char16_t uc4 = u'🍌'; printf("'🍌':\t %#010x\n\n", (int)uc4);
    // 32-bit wide character constants
    char32_t Uc1 = U'a'; printf("'a':\t %#010x\n", (int)Uc1);
    char32_t Uc2 = U'¢'; printf("'¢':\t %#010x\n", (int)Uc2);
    char32_t Uc3 = U'猫'; printf("'猫':\t %#010x\n", (int)Uc3);
    char32_t Uc4 = U'🍌'; printf("'🍌':\t %#010x\n\n", (int)Uc4);
    // wide character constants
    wchar_t wc1 = L'a'; printf("'a':\t %#010x\n", (int)wc1);
    wchar_t wc2 = L'¢'; printf("'¢':\t %#010x\n", (int)wc2);
    wchar_t wc3 = L'猫'; printf("'猫':\t %#010x\n", (int)wc3);
    wchar_t wc4 = L'🍌'; printf("'🍌':\t %#010x\n\n", (int)wc4);
}

constant value     
-------- ----------
'a':	 0x00000061
'🍌':	 0xf09f8d8c
'ab':	 0x00006162
'a':	 0x00000061
'¢':	 0x000000a2
'猫':	 0x0000732b
'🍌':	 0x0000df4c
'a':	 0x00000061
'¢':	 0x000000a2
'猫':	 0x0000732b
'🍌':	 0x0001f34c
'a':	 0x00000061
'¢':	 0x000000a2
'猫':	 0x0000732b
'🍌':	 0x0001f34c

References

See also