You can use either double quotes or single quotes to delimit string literals in EQUEL/BASIC, as long as the same delimiter is used at the beginning and the end of any one string literal.

To embed a double quote with a string literal, use single quotes as the string delimiter. Single quotes cannot be embedded in a string literal. If you want to embed single quotes in a character string, assign the string to a variable and use the variable in the EQUEL statement.

When continuing an EQUEL statement to another line in the middle of a string literal, use a backslash immediately prior to the end of the first line. In this case, the backslash and the following newline character are ignored by the preprocessor, so that the following line can continue both the string and any further components of the EQUEL statement. Any leading spaces on the next line are considered part of the string. For example, the following are legal EQUEL statements: