String literals are specified by one or more characters enclosed in single quotes. The default data type for string literals is varchar, but a string literal can be assigned to any character data type or to the money or date data types without using a data type conversion function.

To compare a string literal with a non-character data type (A), you must either cast the string literal to the non-character data type A, or cast the non-character data type to the string literal type. Failure to do so may result in unexpected results if the non-character data type contains the 'NUL (0) value.

To include a single quote inside a string literal, it must be doubled. For example:

which evaluates to