Possible Duplicate:
What does the word “literal” mean?
Often when reading literature about C++, I encounter the word "literal". It is a bit unclear to me what exactly this term means in C++.
A literal is some data that's presented directly in the code, rather than indirectly through a variable or function call.
Here are some examples, one per line:
42
128
3.1415
'a'
"hello world"
The data constituting a literal cannot be modified by a program, but it may be copied into a variable for further use:
int a = 42; // creates variable `a` with the same value as the literal `42`
This concept is by no means unique to C++.
The term "literal" comes from the fact that you've written data literally into your program, i.e. exactly as written, not "hidden" behind a variable name.
Wikipedia gives you quickly this about literals.
In your C or C++ source code, Things like 1234
, nullptr
(in recent C++), "abcd"
are literals.
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