Escape sequences

 

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Escape sequences are used to define certain special characters within string literals.

The following escape sequences are available:

Escape sequence	Description	Representation
\'	single quote	byte 0x27
\"	double quote	byte 0x22
\?	question mark	byte 0x3f
\\	backslash	byte 0x5c
\0	null character	byte 0x00
\a	audible bell	byte 0x07
\b	backspace	byte 0x08
\f	form feed - new page	byte 0x0c
\n	line feed - new line	byte 0x0a
\r	carriage return	byte 0x0d
\t	horizontal tab	byte 0x09
\v	vertical tab	byte 0x0b
\nnn	arbitrary octal value	byte nnn
\xnn	arbitrary hexadecimal value	byte nn
\unnnn	arbitrary Unicode value. May result in several characters.	code point U+nnnn
\Unnnnnnnn	arbitrary Unicode value. May result in several characters.	code point U+nnnnnnnn

Notes

The new-line character \n has special meaning when used in text mode I/O, it is converted to the OS-specific newline byte or byte sequence.

Octal escape sequences have a limit of three octal digits, but terminate at the first character that is not a valid octal digit if encountered sooner.

Hexadecimal escape sequences have no length limit and terminate at the first character that is not a valid hexadecimal digit. If the value represented by a single hexadecimal escape sequence does not fit the range of values represented by the character type used in this string literal (char, char16_t, char32_t, or wchar_t), the result is unspecified.

A universal character name in a narrow string literal may map to more than one char due to multibyte encoding.

The question mark escape sequence \? is used to prevent trigraphs from being interpreted inside string literals: a string such as "??/" is compiled as "\", but if the second question mark is escaped, as in "?\?/", it becomes "??/"

Example

run this code

#include <iostream>
 
int main()
{
    std::printf("This\nis\na\ntest\n\nShe said, \"How are you?\"\n");
}

Output:

This
is
a
test
 
She said, "How are you?"

See also

• ASCII chart