char

Description

A data type used to store a character value. Character literals are written in single quotes, like this: A (for multiple characters - strings - use double quotes: "ABC").

Characters are stored as numbers however. You can see the specific encoding in the ASCII chart. This means that it is possible to do arithmetic on characters, in which the ASCII value of the character is used (e.g. A + 1 has the value 66, since the ASCII value of the capital letter A is 65). See

Serial.println
reference for more on how characters are translated to numbers.

The size of the

char
datatype is at least 8 bits. It’s recommended to only use
char
for storing characters. For an unsigned, one-byte (8 bit) data type, use the
byte
data type.

Syntax

char var = val;

Parameters

  • var
    : variable name
  • val
    : the value to assign to that variable

Example Code

1char myChar = 'A';
2 char myChar = 65; // both are equivalent

See also

Suggest changes

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License

The Arduino documentation is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 license.