The term literal is commonly used to describe a sequence of characters in a C code that designates a constant value such as a number (e.g. 0
) or a string (e.g. "C"
). Strictly speaking, the standard uses the term constant for integer constants, floating constants, enumeration constants and character constants, reserving the term 'literal' for string literals, but this is not common usage.
Literals can have prefixes or suffixes (but not both) which are extra characters that can start or end a literal to change its default type or its representation.