COBOL Manual for TNS/E Programs (H06.08+, J06.03+)

Example 9 Hexadecimal Numeric Literals
H"00"
H"0F"
H"0123456789ABCDEF"
H"1003c55b"
Simple Nonnumeric Literals
A simple nonnumeric literal is a character-string that has the value of the sequence of its characters.
char
is an alphanumeric character or a quotation mark ("). If char is a quotation mark, it must be
immediately followed by another quotation mark. Each pair of quotation marks represents a
single embedded quotation mark. A simple nonnumeric literal can have at most 160 characters,
excluding the delimiting quotation marks.
Simple nonnumeric literals follows these rules:
• The literal must be both preceded and followed by at least one separator.
• The delimiting quotation marks are part of the character-string that represents the literal; they
are not part of the value of the literal.
• HP COBOL accepts only the double quotation mark ("), not the apostrophe ('), as a quotation
mark.
• The literal does not include the second of two consecutive quotation marks that represent a
single, embedded one.
• All other characters in the literal represent themselves as a part of the literal’s value and have
no other interpretation. Lowercase letters are not equivalent to their uppercase counterparts.
Punctuation characters are not interpreted as separators.
• The value of a literal is the ordered sequence of characters in its representation (excluding the
delimiting quotation marks and interpreting a pair of contained quotation marks as a single
quotation mark character). The literal represents a data item of the alphanumeric category
whose value is the value of the literal.
Example 10 Nonnumeric Literals
"THIS IS A NONNUMERIC LITERAL"
"This is ANOTHER one. "" IS ONE EMBEDDED QUOTATION MARK"
"You don't need to double apostrophes."
". , ; : ( ) == are not separators in literals."
Hexadecimal Nonnumeric Literals
72 Language Elements