CSharp/C# Tutorial - C# Characters and Strings

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C#'s char type aliasing the System.Char type represents a Unicode character.

A char literal is specified inside single quotes:

char c = 'A';

The code above creates a char type variable c and assigns value A to it.

Escape sequences

Escape sequences express characters that cannot be expressed literally.

An escape sequence is a backslash followed by a character with a special meaning.

For example:

char newLine = '\n'; 
char backSlash = '\\'; 

The escape sequence characters are shown in the following Table.

The \u or \x escape sequence can specify any Unicode character via its four-digit hexadecimal code.

For example,

char copyrightSymbol = '\u00A9'; 
char omegaSymbol = '\u03A9'; 
char newLine = '\u000A'; 

Char Conversions

An implicit conversion from a char to a numeric type works for the numeric types that can accommodate an unsigned short.

For other numeric types, an explicit conversion is required.

String Type

C#'s string type aliasing the System.String type represents an immutable sequence of Unicode characters.

A string literal is specified inside double quotes:

string a = "java2s.com"; 

string is a reference type, rather than a value type.

Its equality operators, however, follow value-type semantics:

string a = "test"; 
string b = "test"; 
Console.Write (a == b); // True 

The escape sequences that are valid for char literals also work inside strings:

string a = "Here's a tab:\t"; 

Verbatim string literals

C# allows verbatim string literals.

A verbatim string literal is prefixed with @ and does not support escape sequences.

string a2 = @ "\\root\files\Main.cs"; 

A verbatim string literal can also span multiple lines:

string escaped = "First Line\r\nSecond Line"; 
string verbatim = @"First Line 
                    Second Line"; 
                    

You can include the double-quote character in a verbatim literal by writing it twice:

string xml = @"<emp id=""123""></emp>"; 

String concatenation

The + operator concatenates two strings:

string s = "a" + "b"; 

A nonstring value's ToString method is called on that value. For example:

string s = "a" + 1; // a1 

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