Thread: Having problems with "stray '/nnn' in program" error. Can someone help?

Hi! First of, I am completely new to C (and programming in general), so there might be some paramount error that I haven't noticed.

Ok, so I am going through the 'Learn C the Hard Way' (because no other tutorial have been so good before), and I have encountered a problem with trying to write a string (or char array).

Code:

Code:

# include <stdio.h>

int main() {

char full_name[] = "William Lastname";

printf("My full name is: %s", full_name);
return 0;

}

I am running Ubuntu in a VirtualBox, and using nano to write the program. When I try to make (compile?) the program, I get the following errors: "test.c:5:1: Error: Stray /302 in program" and "test.c:5:1: Error: Stray /240 in program", and in Terminal, the error points to the first c in the 'char'.

I did some research and found out that the stray error is due to non-standard ASCII characters and most likely due to the wrong kind of quotation marks and that this was most likely due to having copying/pasted the code from one area to another, but as previously stated, I am using nano in Ubuntu so I don't really see where the problem might have originated.

Can someone help me figure out how to fix the problem?

It does not look like the usual quotes arising from say, trying to code in a rich text editor. Suppose you copied and pasted this instead:

Code:

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void) {
    char full_name[] = "William Lastname";
    printf("My full name is: %s\n", full_name);
    return 0;
}

Maybe, but when installing the OS there should have been a keyboard check.

Okay, so I tried to make another program dealing only with integers to see if the problem still persists. It did not.

Code:

#include <stdio.h>

int main() {

int a = 5;
printf("num: %d", a);
return 0;

}

That code throws no error at all, even though I've used the exact same quotation marks. I tried with other types as well, but this seems to only be a problem with chars. :/

EDIT: I rewrote the program the exact same way, and this time it did not throw any errors. So... I figured it out?