4.10 Characters The type char represents single characters. The form of a character declaration is: char variable ; // comment Characters are enclosed in single quotation marks ( ' ). 'A' , 'a' and '!' are character constants. The backslash character (\) is called the escape character . It is used to signal that a special character follows . For example, the character \t can be used to represent the single character "tab." \n is the newline character. It causes the output device to go to the beginning of the next line, similar to a return key on a typewriter. The character \\ is the backslash itself. Finally, characters can be specified by \ nnn , where nnn is the octal code for the character. Table 4-3 summarizes these special characters. For a full list of ASCII character codes, see Appendix A. Table 4-3. Special characters Character | Name | Meaning | \b | Backspace | Move the cursor to the left one character. | \f | Form feed | Go to top of a new page. | \n | New line | Go to the next line. | \r | Return | Go to the beginning of the current line. | \t | Tab | Advance to the next tab stop (eight-column boundary). | \' | Apostrophe or single quotation mark | The character '. | \" | Double quote | The character ". | \ | Backslash | The character \. | \ nnn | The character nnn | The character number nnn (octal). | \xNN | The character NN | The character number NN (hexadecimal). | | While characters are enclosed in single quotes ( ' ), a different data type, the string literal, is enclosed in double quotes ( " ). A good way to remember the difference between these two types of quotes is that single characters are enclosed in single quotes. Strings can have any number of characters (including double quote characters), and they are enclosed in double quotes. | | Example 4-5 demonstrates the use of character variables by reversing three characters. Example 4-5. print3/print3.cpp #include <iostream> char char1; // first character char char2; // second character char char3; // third character int main( ) { char1 = 'A'; char2 = 'B'; char3 = 'C'; std::cout << char1 << char2 << char3 << " reversed is " << char3 << char2 << char1 << "\n"; return (0); } When executed, this program prints: ABC reversed is CBA |