Character Data Type

The char data type is used to store a single character, such as 'A' or 'w'. In the next chapter, we will delve into combining these characters into sequences to create words, sentences, and more. For now, let’s focus on using char for single-character storage.

main


              1234567
            
#include <iostream>

int main()
{
    char letter = 'G';  
    std::cout << letter << std::endl;
}

Note

char should be specified in single quotes. Even if the character you hold is a number, you should put it in single quotes, '9', not 9.

You can play with the code above to see what happens if you use double quotes or assign numbers without quotes.

The char data type and memory.

To be stored in memory, it is first converted to a number using ASCII table. The binary representation of that number is then stored in memory.
You can take a quick look at the ASCII table below (the first column is not valuable for us).

main


              12345678
            
#include <iostream>

int main()
{
    // Change the number to output different symbol
    char symbol = 100;
    std::cout << symbol;
}

Note

If you assign a number without single quotes to a char (for example, char letter = 76), the compiler assumes that you specified a character already converted to a number.

As you can see from the table, 76 corresponds to L, so the value of letter is 'L'.

Everything was clear?

Thanks for your feedback!

Section 3. Chapter 1