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2.4) Primitive Data Types of C++: Characters


Available types:

  • char for basic 8-bit characters (latin alphabet)
  • wchar_t for 'wide' (16 or 32-bit) characters (not used in this course)

Note that char and wchar_t represent single characters, not strings of characters; C++ provides a separate string type for that

Representation of literal values:

  • Literal characters are enclosed in single quotes - e.g., 'x'
  • Wide characters are indicated via an L prefix - e.g., L'X'
  • Three-digit octal (base 8) character codes can be used, with \ as a prefix - e.g., '\167' is 'w', '\170' is 'x'
  • Escape sequences exist to represent 'special' characters - for example, '\t' is a tab, '\n' is a newline