<html lang="en"> <head> <title>Chars - Using as</title> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html"> <meta name="description" content="Using as"> <meta name="generator" content="makeinfo 4.7"> <link title="Top" rel="start" href="index.html#Top"> <link rel="up" href="Characters.html#Characters" title="Characters"> <link rel="prev" href="Strings.html#Strings" title="Strings"> <link href="http://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/" rel="generator-home" title="Texinfo Homepage"> <!-- This file documents the GNU Assembler "as". Copyright (C) 1991, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2006, 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled ``GNU Free Documentation License''. man end--> <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css"> <style type="text/css"><!-- pre.display { font-family:inherit } pre.format { font-family:inherit } pre.smalldisplay { font-family:inherit; font-size:smaller } pre.smallformat { font-family:inherit; font-size:smaller } pre.smallexample { font-size:smaller } pre.smalllisp { font-size:smaller } span.sc { font-variant:small-caps } span.roman { font-family: serif; font-weight: normal; } --></style> </head> <body> <div class="node"> <p> <a name="Chars"></a>Previous: <a rel="previous" accesskey="p" href="Strings.html#Strings">Strings</a>, Up: <a rel="up" accesskey="u" href="Characters.html#Characters">Characters</a> <hr><br> </div> <h5 class="subsubsection">3.6.1.2 Characters</h5> <p><a name="index-single-character-constant-164"></a><a name="index-character_002c-single-165"></a><a name="index-constant_002c-single-character-166"></a>A single character may be written as a single quote immediately followed by that character. The same escapes apply to characters as to strings. So if you want to write the character backslash, you must write <kbd>'\\</kbd> where the first <code>\</code> escapes the second <code>\</code>. As you can see, the quote is an acute accent, not a grave accent. A newline immediately following an acute accent is taken as a literal character and does not count as the end of a statement. The value of a character constant in a numeric expression is the machine's byte-wide code for that character. <span class="command">as</span> assumes your character code is ASCII: <kbd>'A</kbd> means 65, <kbd>'B</kbd> means 66, and so on. </body></html>