C++ Escape Characters

1. Control Characters in C++
2. Punctuation Characters in C++
3. Numeric Character References in C++

This tutorial will first discuss the escape characters in C and C++. The only caveat here is that using hexadecimal codes assumes having an ASCII-compatible character encoding.

Control Characters in C++

Punctuation Characters in C++

\" is the quotation mark (double apostrophe). Also, note that the backslash will not be needed if the character is written as '"'.

\' = apostrophe. Again, the backslash will not be required in a specific case, and this time it is "'".

\? = Question mark (However, it is only used in specific cases, such as avoiding trigraphs. In C, Trigraphs are groups of 3 characters that have a specific meaning when used together.

For example, the ??= trigraph is equivalent to the # punctuation mark. More information can be found in this documentation.

\\ = Backslash. For when you need to write a backslash.

Numeric Character References in C++

\ +(plus sign) any 3 octal digits.

\x + plus any number of hexadecimal digits. Note that the compiler reads the hexadecimal digits until they encounter the first non-hex digit, and after encountering the first non-hex digit, it stops reading digits for the current character.

\u + plus 4 hex digits (Unicode BMP, added in C++11).

\U + plus 8 hex digits (Unicode astral planes, added in C++11).

\0 = \00 = \000 = Null character.

Another special case is \e, which is not standard in C or C++ but would be used by some compilers to represent \x1B.

If you wish to have something non-standard, for example, to construct a string with a character 0, followed by a null character \0, followed by the character 0 once again, then you have a couple of options.

String Concatenation Syntax:

std::string(
    "0\0"
    "0",
    3);

Initializer List Syntax:

std::string{'0', 0, '0'};

Using the latter option over the first option is generally preferred, as you avoid specifying sizes and can also avoid using the escape characters altogether.