What is the difference between 5 and '5'

5 + 1  = 6
'5' + 1 = 54

Why does the seceond line equal 54???

What does '' around numbers???

[Star Strider]

To make things even more interesting:

"5" + 1 = "51"

[Bruno Luong]

Associativity warning

>> "5"+1+2

ans = 

    "512"

>> 1+2+"5"

ans = 

    "35"

Answer 1

[Bruno Luong]

The '5' is the char array. Char array contain a text including number, such as 'Schrodinger has 2 dogs and 1/2 cat'. Char array uses ASCII code internally (actually UNICODE) and the ascii code of '5' is 53, therefore '5'+1 = 53+1 = 54

5 (without quote) is number 5, where the arithmetics operations has standard meaning.

[Jonathan Mendoza]

*claps*

[Walter Roberson]

There are deep historical reasons why the digits are not the first 10 positions in the character codes. It goes back to Morse code and the fact that Morse originally had no digits, and it goes back to mechanical selector lines...

For a while it looked like BCD or later EBCDIC would become the standard. EBCDIC coded '0' as the character after '9'.

https://nrich.maths.org/2198