How is ch\u0061r a ='a'; valid?

[Hemal Mehta]

How is ch\u0061r a ='a'; valid?

[Valentin Crettaz]

During the lexical translation of a Java source file, all Unicode escapes are transformed to their Unicode character counterpart, that is
ch\u0061r a ='a';
is transformed to
char a = 'a';
char \u0061r ='a';
and
char a = '\u0061';
would also be valid.
See JLS 3.2 Lexical Translations for more details.

[Jessica Sant]

yup -- if you really really wanted -- you could write your ENTIRE program in Unary characters (that'd really promote maintainability and readability, don't ya think?) But that's just sillyness. However, I would expect a question having to do with it somehow on the exam. You're not expected to memorize all the characters, but you should know that its legal to use them.
Just as a real life example, I've used Unary characters in our Application Server when dealing with Internationalization and multi-byte characters (Japanese, Korean, etc).

[Pallavi Chakraborty]

Hello Valentin,
I saw this question in Khalid Mughals Book.
ch\u0061r a ='a';
What is the purpose of the a before the = symbol.
Doesn't it become char a a = a ?
I am a little confused?
Thanks
Pallavi

[Valentin Crettaz]

In
ch\u0061r a ='a';
the a before the = sign is the variable name.
If you look carefully and replace the Unicode escape \u0061 with the Unicode character a, you should get
char a = 'a';
[ February 06, 2003: Message edited by: Valentin Crettaz ]

[Pallavi Chakraborty]

Hello Valentin,
Thanks so much.
I totally missed it.
ch \u0061 r = char
Thank you once again
Pallavi