C String Literals

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.

Syntax

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

Remarks

This example 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's always interpreted as a line-continuation character.

See also

Elements of C