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Escape Characters in C Language

Escape sequences are special characters. They are used inside strings or character constants. They start with a backslash \ and represent actions such as a new line, tab space, etc.
Escape Character Meaning Example Output
\n New line (moves the cursor to the next line) New
Line
\t Horizontal tab (adds tab space) Tab    Space
\b Backspace (removes the previous character) Back\bspace
\r Carriage return (moves the cursor to the beginning of the line) Carriage\rReturn
\f Form feed / new page (page break – rarely used) Form\fFeed
\v Vertical tab (moves the cursor down) Vertical\vTab
\a Alert / beep (produces a sound) Alert\aBeep
\\ Backslash (prints \) \
\' Single quote (prints ') '
\" Double quote (prints ") "
\? Question mark (used to avoid trigraph conflicts) ?
\0 Null character (end of string) \0

Numeric Escape Sequences in C Language

Numeric escape sequences represent characters using numeric values. They are mainly of two types.
  1. Octal Escape Sequence
  2. Hexadecimal Escape Sequence

1. Octal Escape Sequence

  • Syntax: \ooo
  • Here, ooo is an octal number (base 8).
  • It represents an ASCII value in octal form.
  • Range: 1 to 3 octal digits (0–7).

Example


#include<stdio.h>
int main() {
    printf("Programming Language \103");  // \103 = 'C' (octal 103 = decimal 67)
    return 0;
}

Output:

Programming Language C

2. Hexadecimal Escape Sequence

  • Syntax: \xhh
  • Here, hh is a hexadecimal number (base 16).
  • It represents an ASCII value in hexadecimal form.
  • Range: Any number of hex digits (0–9, a–f, A–F).

Example


#include<stdio.h>
int main() {
    printf("Programming Language \x43");  // \x43 = 'C' (hex 43 = decimal 67)
    return 0;
}

Output:

Programming Language C

Null Character (Special Case)

  • Syntax: \0
  • It indicates the end of a string.
  • In C, strings always end with a null character.

Example


#include<stdio.h>
int main() {
    char str[] = "Programming\0 Language";
    printf("%s", str);
    return 0;
}

Output:

Programming

(The word "Language" is not printed because \0 marks the end of the string.)

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