Why this statement is legal C statement?? int apple = ‘c’ ;

Question

Why this statement is legal C statement??

int apple = ‘c’ ;

Isn't int for numbers??

Answer 1

its legal because C reads every character as an integer.

for instance, test this:

int apple = 'a';

printf("int: %d\nchar: %d",apple,apple);

// will print
97
a

because to C, the character 'a' and the number 97 are the same thing.

Answer 2

Integer for any known character is its ASCII value in most programming language.
Refer this: http://www.asciitable.com/