Question

I am looking at some code from one of our customers and found this function parameter I’ve never seen before:

some_function('ESFc');

In the debugger I set the value to

char c = 'ESFc';

and it equals 99

He also is using ‘ESSc’, ‘ESCm’ and ‘ESBd’ which eval to 99, 109 and 100

What is this? Is it some kind of escape code?

Answer 1

It’s a multi-character literal, but its value is not 99. The type of 'ESFc' is actually an int, and when you store it in a char it loses precision. See this question:

What do single quotes do in C++ when used on multiple characters?