Characters

• We will discuss two basic data types, strings and characters.
• Characters or char are the most basic of the two.
• Computer Memory can only hold numbers.
  • In fact, it can only hold the numbers 0 or 1.
• We need a way to "represent" letters.
• ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) is such a code.
  • do man ascii (On line version)
  • The number is stored in memory.
  • When the value is printed, it is converted to the letter.
  • The same is true, in opposite for input.
• Examples (all values are decimal)
  • What does ASCII 68 97 110 represent?
  • How do you represent Hello in ASCII?
  • What is ASCII for the letters '4' and '2'?
  • What does ASCII 42 stand for?
  • Is '4''2' the same as 42?
  • What is the ASCII code for a newline?
  • What is the letter associated with ASCII code 0
• A few special characters are represented with \ as an escape.
  • \n is the newline
  • \t is a tab
  • \\ is the \
• The character type holds an ASCII code.
• The type is char.
• And characters are enclosed in ''
  • const char MIDDLE_INITIAL {'M'};
  • char firstInitial = 'D';
  • cout << '\t' << "is the tab" << endl;
• cin
  • cin is the standard input stream.
  • >> are the stream extraction operators.

  • char aLetter;
    
    cin >> aLetter;
             

  • This will
    • Skip all whitespace.
    • Read in the next non-whitespace character and store it in aLetter
  • If you want the next character, white space or not, use cin.get(aLetter)
• Let's write a program that will read in three initials and print out all possible permutations.