What is the difference between a String Constant and String Literal in C?

c string-literals string-constant
Dave picture Dave · Oct 12, 2010 · Viewed 7.4k times · Source

What's the difference between a String Constant and String Literal in plain C?

This question is similar to another: What's the difference between a string constant and a string literal? ...except that one was regarding Objective-C (using NSString) and not C.

Answer

user166390 picture user166390 · Oct 12, 2010

In the C99 Draft from 2007 the term sting literal is used. The term string constant does not appear in the draft at all.

I find string literal to be a good term choice when talking about "foo" (just as 42 is a literal number, "foo" is a literal string).

Related questions

What does the symbol \0 mean in a string-literal?

Consider following code: char str[] = "Hello\0"; What is the length of str array, and with how much 0s it is ending?

Read More
Single quotes vs. double quotes in C or C++

When should I use single quotes and double quotes in C or C++ programming?

Read More
How can I get double quotes into a string literal?

I have the following output created using a printf() statement: printf("She said time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like a banana."); but I want to put the actual quotation in double-quotes, so the output is She said "…

Read More