Char

The char (or character) data type generally stores a single character, represented by a certain character set.

Size of a char

Chars are usually between 8 bits, but in some languages, are larger:

• 8-bit chars generally only store regular ASCII characters, or individual bytes of a UTF-8 unicode character (this is the case in the C programming language).
• Other languages such as Rust instead allow a char to store any unicode character. In Rust, the char data type has a size of 4 bytes, or 32 bits.

Making up a string

When multiple char values are collected in an array or list (or other collection), they form a sequence of characters known as a string.