Literals

C++

Integers

Integer numbers are a decimal value followed by an optional type suffix.

In C++ an integer literal can be expressed as just the number or also with a suffix. Values in hexadecimal, octal and binary are denoted with a prefix:

  1. // Integers
  2. 42
  3. 999U
  4. 43424234UL
  5. -3456676L
  6. 329478923874927ULL
  7. -80968098606968LL
  8. // C++14
  9. 329'478'923'874'927ULL
  10. // Hex, octal, binary
  11. 0xfffe8899bcde3728 // or 0X
  12. 07583752256
  13. 0b111111110010000 // or 0B

The u, l, and ll suffixes on integers denotes if it is unsigned, long or a long long type. The u and l/ll can be upper or lowercase. Ordinarily the u must precede the size but C++14 allows the reverse order.

C++14 also allows single quotes to be inserted into the number as separators - these quotes can appear anywhere and are ignored.

Floating point numbers

Floating point numbers may represent whole or fractional numbers.

Boolean values

C/C++ bool literals are true or false.

Characters and Strings

A character literal is enclosed by single quotes and an optional width prefix. The prefix L indicates a wide character, u for UTF-16 and U for UTF-32.

  1. 'a'
  2. L'a' // wchar_t
  3. u'\u20AC' // char16_t
  4. U'\U0001D11E' // char32_t

One oddity of a char literal is that sizeof('a') yields sizeof(int) in C but sizeof(char) in C++. It isn’t a good idea to test the size of a character literal.

A char16_t and char32_t are sufficient to hold any UTF-16 and UTF-32 code unit respectively.

A string is a sequence of characters enclosed by double quotes. A zero value terminator is always appended to the end. Prefixes work the same as for character literals with an additional u8 type to indicate a UTF-8 encoded string.

  1. "Hello"
  2. u8"Hello" // char with UTF-8
  3. L"Hello"   // wchar_t
  4. u"Hello"   // char16_t with UTF-16
  5. U"Hello"   // char32_t with UTF-32

User-defined literals

C++11 introduced user-defined literals. These allow integer, floats, chars and strings to have a user defined type suffix consisting of an underscore and a lowercase string. The prefix may act as a form of decorator or even a constant expression operator which modifies the value at compile time.

C++14 goes further and defines user-defined literals for complex numbers and units of time.

See the link for more information.

Rust

Integers

In Rust number literals can also be expressed as just the number or also with a suffix. Values in hexadecimal, octal and binary are also denoted with a prefix:

  1. // Integers
  2. 123i32;
  3. 123u32;
  4. 123_444_474u32;
  5. 0usize;
  6. // Hex, octal, binary
  7. 0xff_u8;
  8. 0o70_i16;
  9. 0b111_111_11001_0000_i32;

The underscore in Rust is a separator and functions the same way as the single quote in C++14.

Floating point numbers

Floating point numbers may represent whole or fractional numbers. As with integers they may be suffixed to indicate their type.

  1. let a = 100.0f64;
  2. let b = 0.134f64;
  3. let c = 2.3f32; // But 2.f32 is not valid (note 1)
  4. let d = 12E+99_E64;

One quirk with floating point numbers is the decimal point is used for float assignments but it’s also used for member and function invocation. So you can’t say 2.f32 since it thinks you are referencing f32 on 2. Instead syntax requires you to say 2.f32 or alter how you declare the type, e.g. let v: f32 = 2.;.

Booleans

Boolean literals are simply true or false.

  1. true
  2. false

Characters and Strings

A character in Rust is any UTF-32 code point enclosed by single quotes. This value may be escaped or not since .rs files are UTF-8 encoded.

A special prefix b may be used to denote a byte string, i.e. a string where each character is a single byte.

  1. 'x'
  2. '\'' # Escaped single quote
  3. b'&' # byte character is a u8

Strings are the string text enclosed by double quotes:

  1. "This is a string"
  2. b"This is a byte string"

The prefix b denotes a byte string, i.e. single byte characters. Rust allows newlines, space, double quotes and backslashes to be escaped using backslash notation similar to C++.

  1. "This is a \
  2.   multiline string"
  3. "This string has a newline\nand an escaped \\ backslash"
  4. "This string has a hex char \x52"

Strings can also be ‘raw’ to avoid escaping. In this case, the string is prefixed r followed by zero or more hash marks, the string in double quotes and the same number of hash marks to close. Byte strings are uninterpretted byte values in a string.

  1. r##"This is a raw string that can contain \n, \ and other stuff without escaping"##
  2. br##"A raw byte string with "stuff" like \n \, \u and other things"##