iTS 1.0+)

SCREEN COBOL Source Program

Compaq NonStop™ Pathway/iTS SCREEN COBOL Reference Manual—426750-001

2-8

Literals

•

A numeric literal can have one decimal point, which can appear anywhere within the

literal except as the last character. The absence of a decimal point indicates that the

literal is an integer.

The following examples illustrate numeric literals:

•

Integer numeric literals:

+601

-234116

•

Noninteger numeric literals:

+601.1

89.6

0.0051

-.1

Nonnumeric Literals

A nonnumeric literal is any ASCII character string enclosed in quotation marks. The

value of the literal is the string of characters between the quotation marks. The

following rules apply to nonnumeric literals:

•

Nonnumeric literals can have a maximum length of 120 characters, not including the

surrounding quotation marks.

•

If a quotation mark is part of the literal, it must be represented in the string as two

contiguous quotation marks. Only one of these two quotation marks is included in

the character count.

The following example illustrates a nonnumeric literal:

"THIS IS A NONNUMERIC LITERAL"

"12345 THIS IS A NONNUMERIC LITERAL ALSO"

The following example illustrates a nonnumeric literal with an embedded quotation

mark:

"A "" IS PART OF THIS NONNUMERIC LITERAL"