description	Learn more about: C Character Constants
title	C Character Constants
ms.date	11/04/2016
helpviewer_keywords	characters, constants (') single quotation mark constants, character single quotation mark
ms.assetid	388ae7d7-2c3a-44d6-a507-63f541ecd2da

C Character Constants

A "character constant" is formed by enclosing a single character from the representable character set within single quotation marks (' '). Character constants are used to represent characters in the execution character set.

Syntax

character-constant:
 ' c-char-sequence '
 L' c-char-sequence '

c-char-sequence:
 c-char
 c-char-sequence c-char

c-char:
 Any member of the source character set except the single quotation mark ('), backslash (\), or newline character
 escape-sequence

escape-sequence:
 simple-escape-sequence
 octal-escape-sequence
 hexadecimal-escape-sequence

simple-escape-sequence: one of
 \a \b \f \n \r \t \v
 \' \" \\ \?

octal-escape-sequence:
 \ octal-digit
 \ octal-digit octal-digit
 \ octal-digit octal-digit octal-digit

hexadecimal-escape-sequence:
 \x hexadecimal-digit
 hexadecimal-escape-sequence hexadecimal-digit

See also

C Constants