Character literals provide the most convenient way to express char values in Java source code. A character literal consists of:

• An opening single-quote (\\') character.
• A representation of a character. This representation cannot be a single-quote or a line-break character, but it can be an escape sequence introduced by a backslash (\\\\) character; see Escape sequences in literals.
• A closing single-quote (\\') character.

For example:

char a = 'a';
char doubleQuote = '"';
char singleQuote = '\\'';

A line-break in a character literal is a compilation error:

char newline = '
// Compilation error in previous line
char newLine = '\\n';  // Correct