Characters

A character is one letter, digit, sign or mark, written in single quotes: 'က', 'A', '?'. Its kind is စာလုံး ("letter"). All Unicode characters work, emoji included.

'က' ကို ပြသပါ။
'A' ကို ပြသပါ။
'春' ကို ပြသပါ။
'🔥' ကို ပြသပါ။

က
A
春
🔥

A character literal holds one character, no more and no less. 'ab' is an error.

Escape sequences

Some characters are hard to enter, or have a special meaning inside quotes. These are written as an escape sequence. Escape sequences work in characters and in text.

'\'' ကို ပြသပါ။                       // a single quote
'{ယူနီကုဒ် 1000}' ကို ပြသပါ။            // the character with Unicode number 1000 (hex): က
"တစ်{နောက်တစ်ကြောင်း}နှစ်" ဟု ပြသပါ။    // a line break inside text
"{{ }}" ဟု ပြသပါ။                     // literal braces

'
က
တစ်
နှစ်
{ }

Escape	Means
{နောက်တစ်ကြောင်း} or \n	line break ("next line")
\t	tab
\r	carriage return
\0	the null character
\\	a backslash \
\'	a single quote '
\"	a double quote "
{{ and }}	a brace { or }
{ယူနီကုဒ် HHHH} or \uHHHH	the character with Unicode number HHHH (4 or 8 hex digits)

A brace starts a Burmese escape name, so a single { or } must be doubled. A name that Zaka does not know is an error:

"{မသိ}" ဟု ပြသပါ။

error[ZK0106]: unknown escape sequence "{မသိ}"

Hands on

• Print the character with Unicode number 1015.
• Print one piece of text that comes out on three lines.

Next: True and false.