TAL Programmer's Guide

Operands
Using Expressions
5–10 096254 Tandem Computers Incorporated
Here are examples:
Decimal Value REAL REAL(64)
0 0.0E0 0.0L0
2 2.0e0 2.0L0
2 0.2E1 0.2L1
2 20.0E-1 20.0L-1
-17.2 -17.2E0 -17.2L0
-17.2 -1720.0E-2 -1720.0L-2
Character String Constants
A character string constant consists of one or more contiguous ASCII characters
enclosed in quotation mark delimiters, as in:
"Now is the time for good parties."
If a quotation mark is a character within the string, use two quotation marks (in
addition to the quotation mark delimiters), as in:
"The title is ""East of Eden""."
The compiler does not upshift lowercase characters.
When specifying character string constants, you can use any character in the ASCII
character set (shown in Appendix D), including:
Upper and lowercase alphabetic characters
Numerics 0 through 9
Special characters
Each character in a character string requires one byte of contiguous storage. When
you initialize variables with character strings, follow these guidelines:
You can initialize simple variables or arrays of any data type with character
strings.
When you initialize a simple variable, specify a character string that contains the
same number of bytes as the simple variable or fewer.
When you initialize an array, specify a character string that contains up to 127
characters and that fits on one line. If a character string is too long for one line, use
a constant list and break the character string into smaller character strings.
(Constant lists are described in Section 7, “Using Arrays.”)
When you assign character strings to variables, follow these guidelines:
You can assign character strings to STRING, INT, and INT(32) variables, but not to
FIXED, REAL, or REAL(64) variables.
In an assignment statement, specify a character string that contains up to four
characters, depending on the data type of the variable.