3.2 Character constants

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Single character constants, as in C, must be surrounded by single

quotes (').

As in C, special characters are written using the backslash (\)

followed by one or more of the following keywords:

'\a ' /* alarm */

'\b ' /* backspace */

'\f ' /* page feed */

'\l ' /* line feed */

'\n ' /* newline*/

'\r ' /* carriage return */

'\t ' /* tabulation */

'\x?? ' /* symbol ASCII, corresponding to byte presentation,

consisting of two hexadecimal numeral, located

on place of question marks */

'\???' /* symbol ASCII, corresponding to byte notion,

consisting of three decimal numeral, located

on place of question marks */

Any other character following a backslash is read as a simple character.

A single quote (') is written as '\''

NULL is written as ''

In C-- are supported and multialpha symbol constant. Example multialpha

symbol constant:

'ab'

'the'

'this is large'

C-- also supports multicharacter constants, such as:

There is no limit on the number of characters in a character constant

but only the last four characters are significant, since this is the

maximum that can be saved as a 32-bit variable. For instance 'this is

large' and 'arge' are equivalent.

C-- processes all character constants as ASCII values of the

characters. For multicharacter constants the first character corresponds to

the leading byte and the second to the trailing byte, so that 'a'*256+'b'

is the correct code for 'ab'.