What do single quotes do in C++ when used on multiple characters?

Question

I'm curious about this code: cout << 'test'; // Note the single quotes. gives me an output of `1952805748`. My question: Is the output an address in memory or something?

Answer 1

It is not a memory address, they are called multi-character integer character constants. The standards for C++ state that they always resolve to an integer value. They are not recommend for use since they have a portability issue as their exact value is implement-dependent on the compiler used.