Literal Constants
A value, such as 42, in a program is known as a literal constant: literal because we can speak of it only in terms of its value; constant because its value cannot be changed. Every literal has an associated type. For example, 0 is an int and 3.14159 is a double. Literals exist only for the built-in types. There are no literals of class types. Hence, there are no literals of any of the library types.
Rules for Integer Literals
We can write a literal integer constant using one of three notations: decimal, octal, or hexadecimal. These notations, of course, do not change the bit representation of the value, which is always binary. For example, we can write the value 20 in any of the following three ways:
20 // decimal
024 // octal
0x14 // hexadecimal
Literal integer constants that begin with a leading 0 (zero) are interpreted as octal; those that begin with either 0x or 0X are interpreted as hexadecimal.
By default, the type of a literal integer constant is either int or long. The precise type depends on the value of the literalvalues that fit in an int are type int and larger values are type long. By adding a suffix, we can force the type of a literal integer constant to be type long or unsigned or unsigned long. We specify that a constant is a long by immediately following the value with either L or l (the letter “ell” in either uppercase or lowercase).
In a similar manner, we can specify unsigned by following the literal with either U or u. We can obtain an unsigned long literal constant by following the value by both L and U. The suffix must appear with no intervening space:
128u /* unsigned */
1024UL /* unsigned long */
1L /* long */
8Lu /* unsigned long */
There are no literals of type short.
Rules for Floating-Point Literals
We can use either common decimal notation or scientific notation to write floating-point literal constants. Using scientific notation, the exponent is indicated either by E or e. By default, floating-point literals are type double. We indicate single precision by following the value with either F or f. Similarly, we specify extended precision by following the value with either L or l (again, use of the lowercase l is discouraged). Each pair of literals below denote the same underlying value:
3.14159F
.001f
12.345L
0.
3.14159E0f
1E-3F
1.2345E1L
0e0
Boolean and Character Literals
The words true and false are literals of type bool:
bool test = false;
Printable character literals are written by enclosing the character within single quotation marks:
‘a’
‘2’
‘,’
‘ ‘ // blank
Such literals are of type char. We can obtain a wide-character literal of type wchar_t by immediately preceding the character literal with an L, as in L’a’
