What is the difference between 'x' and "x"? [duplicate]

Question

This question already has answers here:

What is the difference between 'a' and "a"? (6 answers)

Closed 9 years ago.

What is the difference between 'x' and "x"?

Does 'x' mean it is a char value and "x" mean it is a string value?

very sorry for the similarity to the other qn as I don't really get the explanation over there as it is too complicated.

Answer 1

The literal 'x' is a char. The literal "x" is a string literal of type const char[2], a null-terminated char array holding values x and \0.

Answer 2

your assumption is correct,

"x" is a string
'x' is a char

Answer 3

'x' means a char with value 'x'.

"x" means a c-type const char array with value {'x', 0}

Answer 4

In C and C++, "x" is of type const char[] which is an array and it is null-terminated (0x00). Whilst 'x' is of type char.
The word 'string' is a little bit ambiguous, because it can mean two things -

• A string of characters (const char[])
• The datatype std::string. C++ has support in the standard library for the String datatype, which can be assigned a const char[].

Just to clarify:

"I am"

Is actually this:

{'I', ' ', 'a', 'm', '\0'}