Talk:String literal

I think that the "raw quoting" mechanism attributed to Python might have prior art in Perl, as in the q%string% style of quoting. Ccreitz 01:55, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Too much Python?
Quote (under section "Prefixes"):

"For example, in Python 'raw strings' are preceded by an  or   – compare   with  . Python 2 also distinguishes two types of strings: 8-bit ASCII ("bytes") strings (the default), explicitly indicated with a   or   prefix, and Unicode strings, indicated with a   or   prefix."

So is this article a Python reference? The second sentence IMO should be omitted, or at least placed in a different section stating some languages distinguish between ASCII and Unicode strings, and then providing an example. However, the way it is currently stated is not good. 82.81.207.18 (talk) 07:58, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

tone

 * Immediately the problem arises: how do you include quotation marks themselves in the strings? If the language allows the use of both styles of quotation marks (e.g. Modula-2), then you can embed one style by quoting with the other style:

Is anyone else sick of this folksy tutorial writing in Wikipedia? The second-person voice is particularly absurd. This is an encyclopedia, not a guide on anything.

draft to improve tone and npov
todo items still in wiki code drefty.mac 07:20, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Variable interpolation
Under the Variable interpolation section I could not get the perl code to work. Here is my log

homebox:~ jpben$ cat testr.pl


 * 1) !/usr/bin/perl

$sName   = "Nancy";

$sGreet  = "Hello World";

print r'$sName said $sGreet to the crowd of people.';

print $/;

homebox:~ jpben$ perl testr.pl

Bad name after r' at testr.pl line 4.

homebox:~ jpben$ perl -v |head -n2

This is perl, v5.8.6 built for darwin-thread-multi-2level

I know in perl you dont need the r, since single quotes do not do variable interpolation. Perhaps this r is a mistake?
 * There is no r in the perl example. You may be referring to the "raw string" example, which is not perl, and is not a feature of perl for the reason you specified. dr.ef.tymac 02:21, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Double-up and Triple-up escape sequence
To me, Double-up and Triple-up escape sequences are completely different concepts which should not share the same headline; triple delimiters are no escape sequences at all but an extension to the dual quoting style. --TobiasHerp 12:49, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Good point. The article has been changed. dr.ef.tymac 15:35, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Escape sequence
The string presented:

"I said, \x22Can you hear me?\x22"

Suggests a 'C' language example, where the \xhh sequence would be a hexadecimal value (0x22 = ASCII double quote (") character).

If so, it appears to be flawed. My compiler (GNU's gcc) complains "warning: hex escape sequence out of range". My reference on the topic (K&R's C Programming Lange Ed. 2) is vague, but suggests that \xhh continues for any number of hex chars (0~9, a~f, A~F) so the "Ca" of "\x22Can" is included by the compiler, as well.

I voice the issue here because it was precisely this point I sought to resolve when I read the page. So I can't claim to know it requires 'correction'. Especially since it doesn't claim to be 'C' syntax. And yet it was confusing... Stubya (talk) 15:53, 29 May 2010 (UTC)


 * This could be clarified, but you are correct in emphasizing that this example is not identified as 'C' syntax. There are multiple programming languages besides C where this example actually produces the intended output, even though it does not when using 'C'. It may be worth clarifying the article. dr.ef.tymac (talk) 21:33, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

BASIC note
FreeBASIC is a BASIC dialect that supports C-style escapes, however, you must prefix each string literal with an !, e.g.:

Would print exactly "Hello\nWorld", however,

Would print:

Hello World

Segin (talk) 18:28, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

External links modified
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string literal - memory
String literals are treated differently from other variables when it comes to memory (at least in c and c++ as far as I know).

They are saved as read only (and sometimes as constants) and thus can't be modified. historically it was to avoid undefined behavior. A different source stated that it was done to protect the program itself because string literals and the code itself are saved in the same place and buffer overflow can cause corrupted code (and there were viruses that exploited this).

Should there be a section about memory in this article? I think it has value beyond formatting of this data type.

edit: it is mentioned partially in the article "Data segment". It might be a good idea to link this article to there (and vice versa). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:ED0:6F40:2E00:B5E7:DE2B:91C5:606D (talk) 23:50, 15 November 2021 (UTC)