Hi Hans:
An explanation to your Question# 2 is provided in the
Java Language Specification. Study Section #3.2 of Chapter# 3 (Lexical Translations) in conjunction with Section# 3.10.4 (Character Literals).
I am giving below excerpts of both the sections for a quick clarification.
[Quote-JLS]
Section# 3.10.4
Because Unicode escapes are processed very early, it is not correct to write '\u000a' for a character literal whose value is linefeed (LF); the Unicode escape \u000a is transformed into an actual linefeed in translation step 1 (�3.3) and the linefeed becomes a LineTerminator in step 2 (�3.4), and so the character literal is not valid in step 3. Instead, one should use the escape sequence '\n' (�3.10.6). Similarly, it is not correct to write '\u000d' for a character literal whose value is carriage return (CR). Instead, use '\r'.
Section# 3.2
3.2 Lexical Translations
A raw Unicode character stream is translated into a sequence of tokens, using the following three lexical translation steps, which are applied in turn:
A translation of Unicode escapes (�3.3) in the raw stream of Unicode characters to the corresponding Unicode character. A Unicode escape of the form \uxxxx, where xxxx is a hexadecimal value, represents the Unicode character whose encoding is xxxx. This translation step allows any program to be expressed using only ASCII characters.
A translation of the Unicode stream resulting from step 1 into a stream of input characters and line terminators (�3.4).
A translation of the stream of input characters and line terminators resulting from step 2 into a sequence of input elements (�3.5) which, after white space (�3.6) and comments (�3.7) are discarded, comprise the tokens (�3.5) that are the terminal symbols of the syntactic grammar (�2.3).
[Unquote JLS]
Hope this helps,please note that we cannot use '\u000d' too.
Cheers,
Balu
