Unity Troubleshooting: How to fix the "Too Many Characters" Error

As a Unity developer, I work with strings all the time. You do, too.

But, you don’t use chars often. When you did use the `char` type, I’ll bet that you ran into a foreboding error. Just like I did.

"Too many characters in character literal".

Huh?

Don’t worry, you’re not alone! This error might look confusing, but it has a simple solution.

In this comprehensive guide, I will tell you everything you need to know. By the end, you will know why this error occurs. You will know what you need to do to fix it. And, you will know how to avoid it in the future.

:::info Key Takeaways

• This error shows up when you create a character literal with more than one character in it.
• You may have written something like this: `char text = ‘Hi, mom!’`.
• If you want to define a single character, use a single character in single quotes to define a character literal: `char text = ‘H’.
• If you want to define a string of characters, use the string type with double quotes: `string text = “Hi, mom!”.

:::

Those are the key takeaways. If you’re still stuck, keep reading. If you want to learn more, keep reading.

How do I define a character literal in C#?

Let’s see why this error happens. The error message might look cryptic at first glance. But, it does help. It points you in the right direction.

This error is related to character literals. A character literal is a programming type. It is the way that you represent an individual text character. We also refer to an individual text character as a glyph. In C#, you define a character literal using single quotes and with the following syntax:

`char singleCharacter = 'H’;`

A character literal always represents a single character.