Java - Assign unicode apostrophe to char

Question

I want to assign the value of aphostrophe to a char:

char a = '\'';

However I would like to use the unicode version of apostrophe (\u0027) to keep it consistent with my code:

char a = '\u0027';

But doing it this way gives an error saying "unclosed character literal".

How can I do this assignment while still having the unicode code in the code?

Answer 1

before javac does anything else, it first convert all \u#### to a char. so your code is equivalent to

char a = ''';

that's why it doesn't compile.

\u#### is not just for char/string literals, you can use it anywhere, e.g. in variable names.

however, people rarely use non latin chars in identifiers; if someone does, he'll probably use his native charset, and he won't need \u#### either.

therefore we never really see \u#### anywhere other than in char/string literals, this gives the wrong impression to the unsuspected.

if there's time machine, we should probably kill this feature, since it's confusing and it's not used.