How can I print a quotation mark in C?

Question

In an interview I was asked

Print a quotation mark using the printf() function

I was overwhelmed. Even in their office there was a computer and they told me to try it. I tried like this:

void main() {     printf("Printing quotation mark " "); } 

but as I suspected it doesn't compile. When the compiler gets the first " it thinks it is the end of string, which is not. So how can I achieve this?

Answer 1

Try this:

#include <stdio.h>  int main() {   printf("Printing quotation mark \" "); } 

Answer 2

Without a backslash, special characters have a natural special meaning. With a backslash they print as they appear.

\   -   escape the next character "   -   start or end of string ’   -   start or end a character constant %   -   start a format specification \\  -   print a backslash \"  -   print a double quote \’  -   print a single quote %%  -   print a percent sign 

The statement

printf("  \"  ");  

will print you the quotes. You can also print these special characters \a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t and \v with a (slash) preceeding it.