Compilation of string literals

Question

Why can two string literals separated by a space, tab or \"\\n\" be compiled without an error?

int main()
{
   char * a = \"aaaa\"  \"bbbb\";
} 

Answer 1

In this statement

char * a = "aaaa"  "bbbb";

the compiler in some step of compilation before the syntax analysis considers adjacent string literals as one literal.

So for the compiler the above statement is equivalent to

char * a = "aaaabbbb";

that is the compiler stores only one string literal "aaaabbbb"