Character Literals

 
Syntax

 

character_literal.bmp

 

  • Character literals must be prefixed and suffixed by a single quote character.

If the "Use Quoted Delimiters" option is not selected in the data dictionary, then character literals can also be prefixed and suffixed by a single double quote character.

 

Use_quoted_delimiters.bmp

 

  • The data type of a character literal is SQL Char, unless the literal contains a character outside of the Latin character set.  If the literal contains a character with a code point greater than 255, its data type is SQL Unicode.  

  • The precision of the literal will be the count of all characters inside the quotes.  

  • An empty string will be treated a varchar(1) field, with a space.

Examples of Character Literals:

 

Literal

Data Type

'abcdef'

Char(6)

'abcdefg'  

Char(7) only if "Use Quoted Delimiters" is disabled; otherwise this is treated as an identifier

'image49.gif'

Unicode(7)

''  (empty quotes)

Varchar(1)