Search code examples
cstringstandards-compliance

printf("string1""string2") is this valid C?

I was trying to figure out something when I wrote this by a mistake

printf("string1""string2");

To my surprise it compiled and produced a concatenated string output i.e

string1string2

Is this valid C?

I am using gcc version 4.4.1 (Ubuntu 4.4.1-4ubuntu9)

Solution

  • Yes it is. Consecutive string literals are concatenated early in the parsing of C.

    6.4.5 / 4:

    In translation phase 6, the multibyte character sequences specified by any sequence of adjacent character and wide string literal tokens are concatenated into a single multibyte character sequence. If any of the tokens are wide string literal tokens, the resulting multibyte character sequence is treated as a wide string literal; otherwise, it is treated as a character string literal.