warning: unknown escape sequence

Hi everyone,

I'm doing some file input/output work here in C and received this warning during compilation (GCC). My research indicates that this error is in response to white space or a character cancellation function or something like that. I'm not 100% sure exactly what it means. I was hoping some of you could help! My code works fine, but the following warning does appear.

Code:

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warning: unknown escape sequence: '\040'

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Here's my code (excluding a bunch of comments at the bottom of the file).

Code:

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#include <stdio.h>


int main(void){
    FILE *file;
    file = fopen("Running\ Practice.c", "a");
    fprintf(file, "Testing...\n");
    fclose(file);
}

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I believe the error I received has to do with either the '\n' I used when appending text to my file, or something to do with there being a space in the file name itself.

Any information (in lamen's terms if possible), would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
Harvey

Quote:

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warning: unknown escape sequence: '\040'
Started by Harvey Meale, 4 Hours Ago

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I can't open the thread mentioned above, but I would say that I know the answer.

This usually occurs, when you copy paste code. Check the single quotes and double quotes. Delete them and rewrite your self (only the quotes). Hope this fixes the warning.

> file = fopen("Running\ Practice.c", "a");
\n, \r, \t etc are valid escape sequences.
\<space> is not a valid sequence.

The 040 comes about because a space is ASCII decimal 32, which in octal is 040.

If you were trying to create a pathname with a directory separator, then do this
file = fopen("Running\\Practice.c", "a");

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Harvey Meale

I believe the error I received has to do with either the '\n' I used when appending text to my file, or something to do with there being a space in the file name itself.

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For spaces in filenames, you don't need any special escape character. Although giving a filename with spaces to a shell command might require this, but that's another story.

Right so, Salem, would I be able to leave it as 'Running Practice.' or do I need the double backslashes? Also, I apologize about the double post. When I posted this thread, I'd receive an error and it posted twice and I couldn't open either of these two threads. Not sure why that is.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Harvey Meale

would I be able to leave it as 'Running Practice.' or do I need the double backslashes?

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On Windows, the \ separates path elements. So if you have a folder called "my dir" and you want to open a file inside that called "my file.txt" you might do the following:

Code:

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FILE *fp = fopen("my dir\\my file.txt","a");

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However, Windows also accepts '/' as the separator, along with Linux, MacOS, FreeBSD, etc... so it would be better to just use this so that it works on all common systems:

Code:

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FILE *fp = fopen("my dir/my file.txt","a");

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by c99tutorial

On Windows, the \ separates path elements. So if you have a folder called "my dir" and you want to open a file inside that called "my file.txt" you might do the following:

Code:

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FILE *fp = fopen("my dir\\my file.txt","a");

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However, Windows also accepts '/' as the separator, along with Linux, MacOS, FreeBSD, etc... so it would be better to just use this so that it works on all common systems:

Code:

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FILE *fp = fopen("my dir/my file.txt","a");

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Oh, okay. I'm actually using Linux and the file name is 'Running Practice.c' in the directory 'Running Practice'. I currently use the backslash in both the file name and the directory, but will try with just the directory in the future.

Cheers!