character literal

C++

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Technical Specifications

C++ language

General topics
Preprocessor Comments	Keywords Escape sequences
Flow control
Conditional execution statements
if	switch
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for range-for (C++11)	while do-while
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continue - break	goto - return
Functions
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inline specifier
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noexcept specifier (C++11)
Exceptions
throw-expression	try-catch block
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Types
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Specifiers
decltype (C++11) auto (C++11) alignas (C++11)	const/volatile constexpr (C++11)
Storage duration specifiers
Initialization
Default initialization Value initialization Zero initialization Copy initialization Direct initialization	Aggregate initialization List initialization (C++11) Constant initialization Reference initialization

Expressions
Value categories Order of evaluation	Operators Operator precedence
Alternative representations
Literals
Boolean - Integer - Floating-point
Character - String - nullptr (C++11)
User-defined (C++11)
Utilities
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Types
typedef declaration
Type alias declaration (C++11)
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static_cast - dynamic_cast
const_cast - reinterpret_cast
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new expression	delete expression
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Inline assembly	History of C++

Expressions

General

value categories (lvalue, rvalue, xvalue)

order of evaluation (sequence points)

constant expressions

unevaluated expressions

primary expressions

lambda-expression(C++11)

Literals

integer literals

floating-point literals

boolean literals

character literals including escape sequences

string literals

null pointer literal(C++11)

user-defined literal(C++11)

Operators

Assignment operators: a=b, a+=b, a-=b, a*=b, a/=b, a%=b, a&=b, a|=b, a^=b, a<<=b, a>>=b

Increment and decrement: ++a, --a, a++, a--

Arithmetic operators: +a, -a, a+b, a-b, a*b, a/b, a%b, ~a, a&b, a|b, a^b, a<<b, a>>b

Logical operators: a||b, a&&b, !a

Comparison operators: a==b, a!=b, a<b, a>b, a<=b, a>=b, a<=>b(C++20)

Member access operators: a[b], *a, &a, a->b, a.b, a->*b, a.*b

Other operators: a(...), a,b, a?b:c

Default comparisons(C++20)

Alternative representations of operators

Precedence and associativity

Fold expression(C++17)

new-expression

delete-expression

throw-expression

alignof

sizeof

sizeof...(C++11)

typeid

noexcept(C++11)

Operator overloading

Conversions

Implicit conversions

const_cast

static_cast

reinterpret_cast

dynamic_cast

Explicit conversions (T)a, T(a)

User-defined conversion

Syntax

' c-char '	(1)
u8 ' c-char '	(2)	(since C++17)
u ' c-char '	(3)	(since C++11)
U ' c-char '	(4)	(since C++11)
L ' c-char '	(5)
' c-char-sequence '	(6)

where

• c-char is either

• a character from the basic source character set minus single-quote ('), backslash (\), or the newline character,
• escape sequence, as defined in escape sequences
• universal character name, as defined in escape sequences

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

1) narrow character literal or ordinary character literal, e.g. 'a' or '\n' or '\13'. Such literal has type char and the value equal to the representation of c-char in the execution character set. If c-char is not representable as a single byte in the execution character set, the literal has type int and implementation-defined value

2) UTF-8 character literal, e.g. u8'a'. Such literal has type char and the value equal to ISO 10646 code point value of c-char, provided that the code point value is representable with a single UTF-8 code unit. If c-char is not in Basic Latin or C0 Controls Unicode block, the program is ill-formed.

3) UCS-2 character literal, e.g. u'', but not u'' (u'\U0001f34c'). Such literal has type char16_t and the value equal to the value of c-char in Unicode, if it is a part of the basic multilingual plane. If c-char is not part of the BMP, the program is ill-formed.

4) UCS-4 character literal, e.g. U'' or U''. Such literal has type char32_t and the value equal to the value of c-char in Unicode.

5) wide character literal, e.g. L'' or L''. Such literal has type wchar_t and the value equal to the value of c-char in the execution wide character set. If c-char is not representable in the execution character set (e.g. a non-BMP value on Windows where wchar_t is 16-bit), the value of the literal is implementation-defined.

6) Multicharacter literal, e.g. 'AB', has type int and implementation-defined value.

Notes

Many implementations of multicharacter literals use the values of each char in the literal to initialize successive bytes of the resulting integer, in big-endian order, e.g. the value of '\1\2\3\4' is 0x01020304.

In C, character constants such as 'a' or '\n' have type int, rather than char.