The char specifier has the following syntax:
>>-+----------+--char------------------------------------------>< +-unsigned-+ '-signed---'
The char specifier is an integral type.
A char has enough storage to represent a character from the basic character set. The amount of storage allocated for a char is implementation-dependent.
You initialize a variable of type char with a character literal (consisting of one character) or with an expression that evaluates to an integer.
Use signed char or unsigned char to declare numeric variables that occupy a single byte.
For the purposes of distinguishing overloaded functions, a C++ char
is a distinct type from signed char and unsigned
char.
Examples of the char Type Specifier
The following example defines the identifier end_of_string as a constant object of type char having the initial value \0 (the null character):
const char end_of_string = '\0';
The following example defines the unsigned char variable switches as having the initial value 3:
unsigned char switches = 3;
The following example defines string_pointer as a pointer to a character:
char *string_pointer;
The following example defines name as a pointer to a character. After initialization, name points to the first letter in the character string "Johnny":
char *name = "Johnny";
The following example defines a one-dimensional array of pointers to characters. The array has three elements. Initially they are a pointer to the string "Venus", a pointer to "Jupiter", and a pointer to "Saturn":
static char *planets[ ] = { "Venus", "Jupiter", "Saturn" };
The wchar_t type specifier is an integral type that has enough storage to represent a wide character literal. (A wide character literal is a character literal that is prefixed with the letter L, for example L'x')
Related References