1

This is kind of a short question. All I want to know is, if I can define a string using single quotation marks ('), instead of the regular ones("). I want to use it in a function like this: print('Hello world');

I unfortunately do not have an Arduino nearby so I cannot test it myself.

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  • 3
    single quotes identify a single character, while double quotes create a string literal – Gerben Jan 26 '17 at 15:28
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    Could you please explain what you want to achieve rather than your likely misguided idea about how to achieve it (i.e. removing quotes)? – Edgar Bonet Jan 26 '17 at 15:29
  • I am making an extensions for a program that requires Arduino code inside the program, but if I write the quotation marks, the debugger reports an error, because there are quotation marks inside quotation marks. – user29519 Jan 26 '17 at 15:35
  • Then you need to update your extension to properly escape the arduino code so that reserved/special characters in the code are not interpreted by the non-arduino debugger. How to do that depends greatly on the program you are extending, which you have not named. – jose can u c Jan 26 '17 at 15:38
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    It's a bit unclear to me what you're trying to do, but perhaps just escaping the "s will achieve what you want. In C, the way to escape something is with a \, so for example char myString[] ="\"\""; would give you a string containing two "s. – Mark Smith Jan 26 '17 at 15:57
1

No, you can't. 'x' defines a single character or integer (note: 'ab' is a two-byte single value [integer] made up from the ASCII values of both characters).

To include " within a string you have two options:

  1. Escape the " with \, as in: char foo[] = "He said \"Hello there\".";
  2. Use "raw strings" if the compiler is configured to support it: char foo[] = R"(He said "Hello there".)";

Option 1 is the most portable since it doesn't require compiler support for modern C++ standards. However it's the hardest to read, especially when you get lots of escapes in the same string.

You can make it more readable by defining QUOTE:

#define QUOTE "\""

char foo[] = "He said " QUOTE "Hello there" QUOTE ".";
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7

No, you cannot. This rules comes from the basic C++ syntax on which the Arduino platform is built.

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  • Is there a way to define it without the qoutation marks? – user29519 Jan 26 '17 at 15:27
  • 1
    Only very convoluted ways. – Edgar Bonet Jan 26 '17 at 15:28
  • Actually, C++ raw string literals are easy to use (ref 1, 2); the only convoluted bit is adding a -std=c++11 or -std=c++0x switch to IDE compiler options. – James Waldby - jwpat7 Jan 26 '17 at 23:41

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