J. Notes for Users of QUEL : QUEL Notes for the Using 4GL Chapter : Using Literals in Expressions
 
Share this page                  
Using Literals in Expressions
The literals in the following example are all expressions.
"J. J. Jones"
"Hendersonville"
"17-Aug-1998 10:00"
1209
7.77
In QUEL, double quotation marks are the standard means for representing string literals. Within a string literal, indicate a literal double quote by preceding it with a backslash character. For example:
"Quotation Mark \""
To specify a literal backslash character, use two backslashes. For example:
"backslash (\\)"
Specify date literals as strings and enclose them in double quotes (for example, "11/15/92"). Dates can be manipulated in date arithmetic operations.
Note:  Beyond this point, this appendix does not show examples in which the only difference between SQL and QUEL is QUEL's use of double quotes.
Using Octal for Nonprintable Characters
In QUEL, specify nonprintable characters as a three-digit octal number preceded by a backslash (\). (Note that the hexadecimal notation described in Using 4GL, is not used.) For example, the following command inserts the string "XYZcarriage return" into col1 and a numeric into col2 of table1:
append to table1 (col1 = "XYZ\015", col2 = 500);