cstring

Return $sv’s contents as a double-quoted C-style string literal.

Synopsis

B::cstring("hi\tthere");   # "hi\tthere"
B::cstring(undef);         # 0

Unprintable bytes become \n, \t, \r, \a, \b, \f, \v, or octal escapes. An undef SV renders as the literal 0 (no quotes), which is the convention B::Deparse depends on. Used by back-ends that emit C-level source.