Assign '\' to char

Question

How do I assign the value of '\' to a character variable?

C++ doesn't recognize the backslash as a character and thinks there should be a 't' or 'n' or something afterwards.

How can the \ be assigned to a char variable?

score 4 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 06 '16 at 13:02

4

You need to escape it properly: '\\'

answered Jan 06 '16 at 13:02

mindriot

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While that is technically valid, you maybe should give some more explanations what's actually _special_ with \. – πάντα ῥεῖ Jan 06 '16 at 14:12

πάντα ῥεῖ · Answer 2 · 2016-01-06T14:07:08.730

4

The backslash character is used as 'escape' sign for characters like '\"' or '\'' to give them a special meaning for their appearance in literals instead of closing the literal.

There's also a number of escaped character values with more special meanings like e.g. '\n', that expands to a new line in output.

To give the special meaning for the \ character, it must be escaped itself:

char c = '\\';
       // ^

edited Jan 06 '16 at 14:07

answered Jan 06 '16 at 13:03

πάντα ῥεῖ

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Good answer. I've deleted my comments. – Pete Becker Jan 06 '16 at 14:08

Assign '\' to char

2 Answers2