Special Characters in Strings

Special Characters in Strings

Some characters are hard to type inside a string. That's where escape sequences come in.

The problem

How do you put a double quote inside a double-quoted string?

char txt[] = "We are the "people" of the world.";

The \" escape prints a literal quote.

Common escapes

• \\ - a single backslash
• \" - a double quote
• \n - newline
• \t - tab
• \0 - null

Example

printf("Line1\nLine2\tTabbed\n");

Why bother?

Without escapes, the compiler would get confused by bare quotes or backslashes inside strings. The backslash tells C "the next char is special".

TL;DR

• Use \" to print a quote inside a string.
• \\ prints a backslash.
• \n and \t are the common whitespace escapes.
• The backslash marks that the next character is special.