[c++] Single quotes vs. double quotes in C or C++

When should I use single quotes and double quotes in C or C++ programming?

Some compilers also implement an extension, that allows multi-character constants. The C99 standard says:

6.4.4.4p10: "The value of an integer character constant containing more than one character (e.g., 'ab'), or containing a character or escape sequence that does not map to a single-byte execution character, is implementation-defined."

This could look like this, for instance:

const uint32_t png_ihdr = 'IHDR';

The resulting constant (in GCC, which implements this) has the value you get by taking each character and shifting it up, so that 'I' ends up in the most significant bits of the 32-bit value. Obviously, you shouldn't rely on this if you are writing platform independent code.

Single quotes are for a single character. Double quotes are for a string (array of characters). You can use single quotes to build up a string one character at a time, if you like.

char myChar     = 'A';
char myString[] = "Hello Mum";
char myOtherString[] = { 'H','e','l','l','o','\0' };

Use single quote with single char as:

char ch = 'a';

here 'a' is a char constant and is equal to the ASCII value of char a.

Use double quote with strings as:

char str[] = "foo";

here "foo" is a string literal.

Its okay to use "a" but its not okay to use 'foo'

In C, single-quotes such as 'a' indicate character constants whereas "a" is an array of characters, always terminated with the \0 character

Double quotes are for string literals, e.g.:

char str[] = "Hello world";

Single quotes are for single character literals, e.g.:

char c = 'x';

EDIT As David stated in another answer, the type of a character literal is int.

In C & C++ single quotes is known as a character ('a') whereas double quotes is know as a string ("Hello"). The difference is that a character can store anything but only one alphabet/number etc. A string can store anything. But also remember that there is a difference between '1' and 1. If you type cout<<'1'<<endl<<1; The output would be the same, but not in this case:

cout<<int('1')<<endl<<int(1);

This time the first line would be 48. As when you convert a character to an int it converts to its ascii and the ascii for '1' is 48. Same, if you do:

string s="Hi";
s+=48; //This will add "1" to the string
s+="1"; This will also add "1" to the string

I was poking around stuff like: int cc = 'cc'; It happens that it's basically a byte-wise copy to an integer. Hence the way to look at it is that 'cc' which is basically 2 c's are copied to lower 2 bytes of the integer cc. If you are looking for a trivia, then

printf("%d %d", 'c', 'cc'); would give:

99 25443

that's because 25443 = 99 + 256*99

So 'cc' is a multi-character constant and not a string.

Cheers

1. single quote is for character;
2. double quote is for string.

Single quotes are characters (char), double quotes are null-terminated strings (char *).

char c = 'x';
char *s = "Hello World";

• 'x' is an integer, representing the numerical value of the letter x in the machine’s character set
• "x" is an array of characters, two characters long, consisting of ‘x’ followed by ‘\0’

A single quote is used for character, while double quotes are used for strings.

For example...

 printf("%c \n",'a');
 printf("%s","Hello World");

Output

a  
Hello World

If you used these in vice versa case and used a single quote for string and double quotes for a character, this will be the result:

  printf("%c \n","a");
  printf("%s",'Hello World');

output :

For the first line. You will get a garbage value or unexpected value or you may get an output like this:

?

While for the second statement, you will see nothing. One more thing, if you have more statements after this, they will also give you no result.

Note: PHP language gives you the flexibility to use single and double-quotes easily.

Single quotes are denoting a char, double denote a string.

In Java, it is also the same.