The kind of a character-literal, its type, and its associated character encoding ([lex.charset]) are determined by its encoding-prefix and its c-char-sequence as defined by Table 9.

Table 9 — Character literals [tab:lex.ccon.literal]

The value of any other kind of character-literal is determined as follows:

• A character-literal with a c-char-sequence consisting of a single basic-c-char, simple-escape-sequence, or universal-character-name is the code unit value of the specified character as encoded in the literal's associated character encoding.

  If the specified character lacks representation in the literal's associated character encoding or if it cannot be encoded as a single code unit, then the program is ill-formed.

• A character-literal with a c-char-sequence consisting of a single numeric-escape-sequence has a value as follows:

  • Let v be the integer value represented by the octal number comprising the sequence of octal-digits in an octal-escape-sequence or by the hexadecimal number comprising the sequence of hexadecimal-digits in a hexadecimal-escape-sequence.

  • If v does not exceed the range of representable values of the character-literal's type, then the value is v.

  • Otherwise, if the character-literal's encoding-prefix is absent or L, and v does not exceed the range of representable values of the corresponding unsigned type for the underlying type of the character-literal's type, then the value is the unique value of the character-literal's type T that is congruent to v modulo , where N is the width of T.

  • Otherwise, the program is ill-formed.

• A character-literal with a c-char-sequence consisting of a single conditional-escape-sequence is conditionally-supported and has an implementation-defined value.

The character specified by a simple-escape-sequence is specified in Table 10.

Table 10 — Simple escape sequences [tab:lex.ccon.esc]