5 Lexical conventions [lex]

5.3 Characters [lex.char]

5.3.1 Character sets [lex.charset]

The translation character set consists of the following elements:
  • each abstract character assigned a code point in the Unicode codespace as specified in the Unicode Standard, and
  • a distinct character for each Unicode scalar value not assigned to an abstract character.
[Note 1: 
Unicode code points are integers in the range [0, 10FFFF] (hexadecimal).
A surrogate code point is a value in the range [D800, DFFF] (hexadecimal).
A Unicode scalar value is any code point that is not a surrogate code point.
β€” end note]
The basic character set is a subset of the translation character set, consisting of 99 characters as specified in Table 1.
[Note 2: 
Unicode short names are given only as a means to identifying the character; the numerical value has no other meaning in this context.
β€” end note]
Table 1: Basic character set [tab:lex.charset.basic]
character
glyph
U+0009
character tabulation
U+000b
line tabulation
U+000c
form feed
U+0020
space
U+000a
line feed
new-line
U+0021
exclamation mark
!
U+0022
quotation mark
"
U+0023
number sign
#
U+0024
dollar sign
$
U+0025
percent sign
%
U+0026
ampersand
&
U+0027
apostrophe
'
U+0028
left parenthesis
(
U+0029
right parenthesis
)
U+002a
asterisk
*
U+002b
plus sign
+
U+002c
comma
,
U+002d
hyphen-minus
-
U+002e
full stop
.
U+002f
solidus
/
U+0030 ..
U+0039
digit zero .. nine
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
U+003a
colon
:
U+003b
semicolon
;
U+003c
less-than sign
<
U+003d
equals sign
=
U+003e
greater-than sign
>
U+003f
question mark
?
U+0040
commercial at
@
U+0041 ..
U+005a
latin capital letter a .. z
A B C D E F G H I J K L M
N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
U+005b
left square bracket
[
U+005c
reverse solidus
\
U+005d
right square bracket
]
U+005e
circumflex accent
^
U+005f
low line
_
U+0060
grave accent
`
U+0061 ..
U+007a
latin small letter a .. z
a b c d e f g h i j k l m
n o p q r s t u v w x y z
U+007b
left curly bracket
{
U+007c
vertical line
|
U+007d
right curly bracket
}
U+007e
tilde
~
The basic literal character set consists of all characters of the basic character set, plus the control characters specified in Table 2.
Table 2: Additional control characters in the basic literal character set [tab:lex.charset.literal]
character
U+0000
null
U+0007
alert
U+0008
backspace
U+000d
carriage return
A code unit is an integer value of character type ([basic.fundamental]).
Characters in a character-literal other than a multicharacter or non-encodable character literal or in a string-literal are encoded as a sequence of one or more code units, as determined by the encoding-prefix ([lex.ccon], [lex.string]); this is termed the respective literal encoding.
The ordinary literal encoding is the encoding applied to an ordinary character or string literal.
The wide literal encoding is the encoding applied to a wide character or string literal.
A literal encoding or a locale-specific encoding of one of the execution character sets ([character.seq]) encodes each element of the basic literal character set as a single code unit with non-negative value, distinct from the code unit for any other such element.
[Note 3: 
A character not in the basic literal character set can be encoded with more than one code unit; the value of such a code unit can be the same as that of a code unit for an element of the basic literal character set.
β€” end note]
The U+0000 null character is encoded as the value 0.
No other element of the translation character set is encoded with a code unit of value 0.
The code unit value of each decimal digit character after the digit 0 (U+0030) shall be one greater than the value of the previous.
The ordinary and wide literal encodings are otherwise implementation-defined.
For a UTF-8, UTF-16, or UTF-32 literal, the implementation shall encode the Unicode scalar value corresponding to each character of the translation character set as specified in the Unicode Standard for the respective Unicode encoding form.

5.3.2 Universal character names [lex.universal.char]

n-char:
any member of the translation character set except the U+007d right curly bracket or new-line character
The universal-character-name construct provides a way to name any element in the translation character set using just the basic character set.
If a universal-character-name outside the c-char-sequence, s-char-sequence, or r-char-sequence of a character-literal or string-literal (in either case, including within a user-defined-literal) corresponds to a control character or to a character in the basic character set, the program is ill-formed.
[Note 1: 
A sequence of characters resembling a universal-character-name in an r-char-sequence ([lex.string]) does not form a universal-character-name.
β€” end note]
A universal-character-name of the form \u hex-quad, \U hex-quad hex-quad, or \u{simple-hexadecimal-digit-sequence} designates the character in the translation character set whose Unicode scalar value is the hexadecimal number represented by the sequence of hexadecimal-digits in the universal-character-name.
The program is ill-formed if that number is not a Unicode scalar value.
A universal-character-name that is a named-universal-character designates the corresponding character in the Unicode Standard (chapter 4.8 Name) if the n-char-sequence is equal to its character name or to one of its character name aliases of type β€œcontrol”, β€œcorrection”, or β€œalternate”; otherwise, the program is ill-formed.
[Note 2: 
These aliases are listed in the Unicode Character Database's NameAliases.txt.
None of these names or aliases have leading or trailing spaces.
β€” end note]