Escape Sequence in C

An escape sequence allow special characters to be put into the source code. It is a sequence of characters that doesn't represent itself when used inside string literal or character.

It is composed of two or more characters starting with backslash \.

List of Escape Sequences in C

Escape Sequence	Meaning
\a	Alarm or Beep
\b	Backspace
\f	Form Feed
\n	New Line
\r	Carriage Return
\t	Tab (Horizontal)
\v	Vertical Tab
\\	Backslash
\'	Single Quote
\"	Double Quote
\?	Question Mark
\nnn	octal number
\xhh	hexadecimal number
\0	Null

Escape Sequence Example

snippet

#include  
int main(){  
	 int number=50;
	printf("You\nare\nlearning\n\'c\' language\n\"Do you know C language\"");   
return 0;
}

Output

You are learning 'c' language "Do you know C language"

snippet

printf("\12");
Produces the decimal character 10 (x0A Hex).

printf("\xFF");
Produces the decimal character -1 or 255 (depending on sign).

printf("\x123");
Produces a single character (value is undefined). May cause errors.

printf("\0222");
Produces two characters whose values are implementation-specific.

Related Tutorial

1 Variables in C

2 Data Types in C

3 Keywords in C

4 C Identifiers

5 C Operators

6 Comments in C

7 C Format Specifier

8 Escape Sequence in C

9 Constants in C

10 Tokens in C

11 C Boolean