Literals in C Programming

Literals are data used for representing fixed values. They can be used directly in the code. For example: 1, 2.5, 'c' etc.

Here, 1, 2.5, & 'c' are literals. Why? You cannot assign different values to these terms.

1. Integers:

An integer is a numeric literal(associated with numbers) without any fractional or exponential part. There are three types of integer literals in C programming:

• decimal (base 10)
• octal (base 8)
• hexadecimal (base 16)

For example:

Decimal: 0, -9, 22 etc

Octal: 021, 077, 033 etc

Hexadecimal: 0x7f, 0x2a, 0x521 etc

In C programming, octal starts with 0, and hexadecimal starts with 0x.

2. Floating-point Literals:

A floating-point literal is a numeric literal that has either a fractional form or an exponent form. For example:

-2.0

0.0000234

-0.22E-5

Note: E-5=10 ^-5

3. Characters:

A character literal is created by enclosing a single character inside single quotation marks. For example: 'a', 'm', 'F', '2', '}' etc.

4. Escape Sequences:

Sometimes, it is necessary to use characters that cannot be typed or has special meaning in C programming. For example: newline(enter), tab, question mark, etc.

In order to use these characters, escape sequences are used.

Escape Sequences
Escape Sequences	Character
\b	Backspace
\f	Form feed
\n	Newline
\r	Return
\t	Horizontal tab
\v	Vertical tab
\\	Backslash
\'	Single quotation mark
\"	Double quotation mark
\?	Question mark
\0	Null character

For example: \n is used for a newline. The backslash \ causes escape from the normal way the characters are handled by the compiler.

5. String Literals

A string literal is a sequence of characters enclosed in double-quote marks. For example:

"good"                  //string constant

""                     //null string constant

"      "               //string constant of six white space

"x"                    //string constant having a single character.

"Earth is round\n"         //prints string with a newline

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