The char type

char is a numerical type, but its main use is to represent characters, not numerical work. C provides a wide range of character literals which return the numerical value of a character (usually the ASCII code). Character literals are enclosed in apostrophes, for example:

char c = 'H';

will assign to c the numerical value of the character H. Since char is an integer type and C will convert between numerical types quite readily, the following are perfectly legal

int i = 'H'; double f = 'c'; i = 'K' * 67.57;

but probably not very useful. C also defines character literals for less convenient characters, such as newline and the tab character (these actually give an int rather than a char, but this difference is not normally important). The newline, horizontal and vertical tab and form-feed characters, together with the space character are known collectively as whitespace.

Table 1.3: Special character literals

literal	meaning
\a	alert (bell)
\b	backspace
\f	page-break (form-feed)
\n	newline (line-feed)
\r	carriage-return
\t	horizontal tab
\v	vertical tab
\"	double-quote
\'	apostrophe
\\	backslash
\ooo	the character with numerical value ooo in octal
\xhh...	the character with numerical value hh... in hexadecimal