| title | C String Literals | Microsoft Docs | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ms.custom | ||||||||||||||
| ms.date | 11/04/2016 | |||||||||||||
| ms.reviewer | ||||||||||||||
| ms.suite | ||||||||||||||
| ms.technology |
|
|||||||||||||
| ms.tgt_pltfrm | ||||||||||||||
| ms.topic | article | |||||||||||||
| dev_langs |
|
|||||||||||||
| helpviewer_keywords |
|
|||||||||||||
| ms.assetid | 4b05523e-49a2-4900-b21a-754350af3328 | |||||||||||||
| caps.latest.revision | 11 | |||||||||||||
| author | mikeblome | |||||||||||||
| ms.author | mblome | |||||||||||||
| manager | ghogen | |||||||||||||
| translation.priority.ht |
|
A "string literal" is a sequence of characters from the source character set enclosed in double quotation marks (" "). String literals are used to represent a sequence of characters which, taken together, form a null-terminated string. You must always prefix wide-string literals with the letter L.
string-literal:
" s-char-sequence opt**"**
L" s-char-sequence opt**"**
s-char-sequence:
s-char
s-char-sequence s-char
s-char:
any member of the source character set except the double quotation mark ("), backslash (\), or newline character
escape-sequence
The example below is a simple string literal:
char *amessage = "This is a string literal.";
All escape codes listed in the Escape Sequences table are valid in string literals. To represent a double quotation mark in a string literal, use the escape sequence \". The single quotation mark (') can be represented without an escape sequence. The backslash (\) must be followed with a second backslash (\\) when it appears within a string. When a backslash appears at the end of a line, it is always interpreted as a line-continuation character.